Background
In 2017, Emily Allchurch began an exciting new collaboration with Karin Weber Gallery in Hong Kong. An Arts Council England/British Council ‘Artists’ International Development Fund’ Award enabled her to travel to Hong Kong in November 2017 for her first solo show with KWG, ‘Then is Now’. At this time she collated a vast image library of photographs from Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories, which she then used to create Babel Hong Kong, and Solitary Temple: Hong Kong, which launched to great acclaim at Art Central HK in 2018 and 2019 respectively.
KWG arranged meetings and guided tours with with local artists and academics which gave Allchurch invaluable insight into the challenges facing Hong Kong residents (lack of space, inequality of wealth, housing shortage, and pollution), all of which helped to inform her experience and ensure a relevant narrative in the resulting works.
Babel Hong Kong adopts the ‘Tower of Babel’ motif by the c16th Flemish painter Lucas van Valckenborch to depict a lively modern metropolis, whilst also paying homage to traditional Chinese painting techniques and compositional devices, exemplified in the shading of the distant mountains and the inclusion of numerous pathways to aid the traveller. Solitary Temple: Hong Kong draws inspiration from Song Dynasty landscape painting, in particular Li Cheng’s ‘A Solitary Temple amid Clearing Peaks’ (c.960), to present the more bucolic qualities of Hong Kong, which appear equally integral to its identity. Both works take the viewer on a journey from a leafy foreground and coastline, to the densely packed metropolis with commercial and residential properties jostling for position, whilst big corporations and the well-heeled seemingly rise above the pollution, and the clouds.
Extensive travel and research in mainland China in 2019, funded by an Arts Council England/British Council ‘Artists’ International Development Fund’ Award led to Emily Allchurch’s ‘Mirrored Cities’ series, which draws parallels between the ancient trading port of Venice, Italy, and historical and contemporary counterpart locations in China, in exploration of themes in common, such as globalisation, mass tourism and trade.
‘Suzhou Twinned with Venice (after Xu Yang)’ (2021), recreates a section of the c18th Chinese hand-scroll ‘Prosperous Suzhou’ by Xu Yang. Allchurch’s re-imaging combines the ancient water town of Suzhou, on China’s Grand Canal in Jiangsu Province, famous for its classical gardens, collectively a UNESCO World Heritage Site, juxtaposed with Venice, all rendered in Chinese asymmetric ‘bird’s eye’ perspective.
Allchurch made ‘Amidst Towering Peaks (after Ma Yuan)’ (2020) from photographs she had taken the year before in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan Province, China. The work is inspired by the Chinese landscape painting tradition of Shan Shui (‘mountain-water’), and was a breath of fresh air to make amidst the anxiety of the Coronavirus pandemic.
During this period of lockdown she also created ‘Memory View Hong Kong I & II’ (2022), revisiting her Hong Kong photographic image library, to explore the relationship, so prevalent there, between nature and the built environment. Presented in a traditional fan shape, these works adopt the Southern Song Ma-Xia school of painting one-corner style of composition, and evoke a sense of nostalgia.
Celebrating her post-pandemic return to Hong Kong with a new work, Towers of Babel: Hong Kong (2024) reflects the city re-energising and finding new directions. As with multiple levels in complex architecture, there are multiple stories of Emily Allchurch’s strong engagement with East Asia, especially with the city of Hong Kong and its multi-facetted manifestations.