METRO
ARTS
THE AGE
WEDNESDAY 7 MAY 1997
Photography
Ian de Gruchy
Review by Freda Freiberg
FOR A COMPLETELY different experience, do not miss Defying Gravity, Ian
de Gruchy's installation at Linden.
A weighty dictionary floats in space in a darkened room, the walls adorned
with a grid of projected lines of light.
On the floor, a black plastic sheet is littered with autumn leaves. We
peer through a blocked door into the constructed cavernous space, the
dictionary open at the page from "grapheme" to "gravity"
- embracing graph paper, grapple, grass, grate, grave, gravitas and gravitation.
Like a cryptic crossword clue constructor, de Gruchy teases us with words,
but there are no anagrams or synonyms here, just a string of words in
alphabetic order that somehow shape the way we read this witty, playful
and imaginative work- For me, it seemed to bury, mourn and also revive
the practice of lexicography, if not the whole linear logocentric tradition.
