Emily was born in Jersey in 1974 and was educated at Jersey Collage for Girls and later trained as a sculptor and earned a first in Fine Art. Throughout, the degree she used photograph as a source of material. She has since established an international reputation for her complex and intricate photographic compositions. I recently visited an exhibition which presented some of Emily Alchurch’s work which impressively showed off her master pieces.

Original image which was used as a source of inspiration – Tower of BabelTower of Babel 2.0

Emily Alchurch uses photography and digital collage to create images by responding to archival images and paintings however with a present day perspective. The old paintings are used as the back bone for her to create her images and for her to explore further into the city or place to produce an extensive image library.  Emilys individual images have to be taken precisely as it has to perfectly fit the image to make it look real. The library that consists of thousands of images are singled out and selected and merged to create a fantasy landscape. Emilys images takes months, even years to create meaning her project is very time consuming. Emily will never fully final the image until she is fully happy with it. Emily presents her work on light-boxes which maximises the exaggeration and creates a sort of window into another world.