Ian de Gruchy
“[I] became interested in photography at high school…in 1968 [and] got my first SLR camera at 17 while studying architecture at Queensland University in 1970. [I] became really interested in the idea of time-based photography while doing sculpture at the SA School of Art doing a number of process pieces culminating in running man frieze which won the Channel 10 Young Artists Award in 1975…I became interested in slides when I discovered a copy-stand at art school…and started photographing small details out of magazines and elements of popular culture (graffiti and posters) off the streets…
My involvement with the Experimental Art Foundation at the time gave me access to slide projectors. I became interested in the possibilities of doing works in social spaces and created a number of projects where I projected directly onto the architecture of spaces using the inherent dynamics of oblique projections and interval timers to create a random multiplicity of image combinations. A Visual Arts Board Grant and the Dyson Bequest enabled me to travel to New York in 1983 where I lived and worked on many projects over a six-year period including a major slide rap performance piece Politext at the Kitchen. I also had the opportunity to work closely with Krzysztof Wodiczko on many of his projects between 1983 and 1989…[I] returned to Australia in late 1989…[and] soon set up a practice specializing in art projections working on many projects involving theatre and performance as well as my own projection installations and public projections…
I am interested in positioning art within a broader social fabric and continue to research into the aesthetic viability of projection to locate ideas in diverse contexts that impact on a public imagination.”
(Ian de Gruchy 2006)
