We are beyond excited to have supported and produced C-type prints for Emily Allchurch’s amazing solo exhibition ‘The Six Seasons’.
‘The Six Seasons’ is an exhibition of new digital collages by the British artist Emily Allchurch. Inspired by Bruegel’s ‘Seasons’ paintings from 1565, Allchurch’s archival prints reimagine Bruegel’s works as assemblages of thousands of contemporary photographs. By recreating Bruegel’s paintings with images from today, Emily looks at the central theme of the ‘Seasons’ – man’s relationship to nature and the land – and asks what has changed in the intervening centuries, and what has stayed the same.
In 1565, Bruegel the Elder was commissioned by the Antwerp merchant Nicolas Jongelinck to paint the ‘Seasons’, a series of six paintings following a calendar year in Northern Europe, with each painting representing two months of the year. The paintings Bruegel created were an exploration of man’s relationship and interactions with nature. The best known of the series, ‘Hunters in the Snow’, records the harshest winter in a period of intense climate change known as the ‘Little Ice Age’ (1300-1850). Despite the hardship resulting from the bitterly cold conditions and food shortages, the painting illustrates man’s ability to endure and find joy, evident in the games being played on the frozen rivers and ponds. It celebrates man’s relationship with nature, no matter how punishing.
Five of Allchurch’s images are based on the surviving paintings that are now distributed across three countries and two continents: The Hunters in the Snow, The Gloomy Day, The Return of the Herd at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; The Harvest at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; and The Haymaking at Lobkowicz Palace, Prague Castle. The final painting, however, has been lost. In ‘The Six Seasons’, Allchurch reimagines the missing painting and reunites it as part of her group. They are to be hung together in one room, a contemporary echo of how Bruegel’s group was intended to hang together in a small dining room in Antwerp.
“As we live through our own period of climate change I wanted to update the series from a contemporary perspective, reflecting on the fragility of nature and the seasons as we have known them, and how our interventions with landscape, mostly through leisure and tourism, are managed and mediated. With its focus on the everyday and ordinary, and a subtle underlying commentary on how we connect with nature and the landscape today, I hope the series successfully captures our current moment in time.”
3rd – 26th October 2024
James Freeman Gallery
354 Upper St,
London
N1 0PD