Back in January Emily Allchurch arrived at Manchester’s Albert Square in the brief period between the Xmas Markets coming down and the Metrolink works resuming.

She took hundreds of photographs and putting them together she has created a Nobel work which harks back one hundred years.

Emily uses photography to recreate old master paintings and prints, creating new and contemporary narratives and in this new exhibition, her inspiration was Adolphe Valette.

For her first solo show in a major public gallery in the UK, In the Footsteps of a Master, which opens on Friday 13th March 2015, Allchurch will present her celebrated Tokyo Story and Tokaido Road series. These works pay homage to the 19th century Japanese printmaker Utagawa Hiroshige and his masterpiece One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–8) and 53 Stations of the Tokaido (1833–1834). 

Displayed on light-boxes, Allchurch’s works reveal not only changes to the topography but also to Japanese society and customs. They will be shown alongside a selection of Manchester Art Gallery’s collection of exquisite but rarely seen original Hiroshige woodblock prints with some loans from our partner, Whitworth Art Gallery and the British Museum. 

Thanks to a successful Art Fund campaign through Art Happens, the UK’s only crowdfunding platform for the museum sector, Manchester Art Gallery have commissioned Allchurch to make a new work based on the painting Albert Square, Manchester 1910 by French Impressionist Adolphe Valette. Valette, who lived and worked in Manchester for many years, painted atmospheric views of the city, and these are a favourite with residents and visitors alike. 

His works capture the essence of Manchester at the turn of the 20th century. Allchurch’s updated re-creation of Valette’s Edwardian cityscape will reveal Manchester as the 21st Century city it is today, resonant with echoes of its historic past.

Allchurch’s works are seamless digital collages, using hundreds of photographs, taken in urban environments today. The complex photographic images have a resonance with place, history and culture and deal with the passage of time and changes to a landscape, fusing contemporary life with the past. Starting with the language of a master, they end with Allchurch’s own voice.

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