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Capital Folly, 2017
von • by Emily Allchurch

www.emilyallchurch.com

Emily Allchurch works with photography and digital collage to re -

construct Old Master paintings and prints from a contemporary

pers pective. Adopting the compositional framework of these origi-

nal images has evolved as a useful device to allow her own explo-

rations around architecture, place, and culture to emerge, infusing

the present-day with a sense of history. It is essential that she uses

her own photography in her work, meticulously selecting and seam -

lessly splicing hundreds of photographic elements, in order to con-

struct a narrative that represents a journey she has made, com-

pressed into a single scene. Presenting the work as lightboxes ma -

xi mises their thea tricality, and creates a window into another world.

For many years Allchurch has been drawn to the etchings of Pira -

nesi as a vehicle for her own expression and commentary on con-
temporary society. Her series Urban Chia ros curo (page 8-9) recrea -

ted several of Piranesi’s Carceri plates from photographs she took in

London, Rome and Paris – offering a visual medi tation on the claus-

trophobic climate of fear and the prevalence of the technology of

surveillance in city environments today. In Ca pi tal Folly Emily All -

church re-constructs Piranesi’s capriccio of a Roman har bour, from

architectural details around the centre of government in Whitehall,

London and Liver pool. Whilst the soaring composition presents an

impressive citadel, closer inspection, as evidenced by the smoulde -

ring pyre to the left, heralds potentially troubled times ahead, with

political and economic uncertainty, and growing ine qua lity of

wealth. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi (page 68-69) reinterprets Pira -

nesi’s fantasy view of the ancient Appian Way, as a tale of two

cities – with architectural fragments of Roman antiquity, intermin-

gled with those of London’s past, present and future development.