Projection #III - Hadleigh Castle, Essex, UK 1989

In Site Specific Projection III, it is our sense of monumentality that Loughrey foremost puts into flux. Here Loughrey unites the decaying, solid, historically potent battlements of Hadleigh Castle in Essex with the prolected image of an aggressively complete public law building in smaller scale but again it is not that one necessarily overwhelms the other, but that together they compete, complement, correlate throughout a viewing. Visually the low building is smaller, an inset amongst the castle's solid walls, yet it sometimes draws the eye more as it is in broad daylight, the castle darker the low building whole and solidly rooted 'In the present, the castle powerful, weighty but partial, a 'ruin'. Yet the law building is 'only' a projection, 'only' two dimensional, the castle walls centuries thick three-dimensional. Mental precepts of current relevance and state endorsement versus historic validity and uniqueness are also all thrown by Loughrey into the tension between the power of the images and, hovering over it all, is the twentieth century premise of the assumed primacy of the prolected image, perpetually reinforced by the passivity of our film screens. David Smith, 1990

MAKE GOOD,1989, Projected image: 35mm transparency of clouds collaged with wrapper text.

Sketch for Hadleigh Castle c.1828-9, Tate Gallery London

Around the turn of the eighteenth century John Constable made many preliminary sketches for possible use in larger works, throughout Essex. One such sketch was of Hadleigh Castle.

Constable finished his final painting of Hadleigh Castle in 1814 shortly after the death of his wife, thus it is said to be steeped with remorse. It was this picture amongst others which reinforced Constable in the realm of 'Romanticism', alongside Casper David Fredrich.

On a trip to Berlin (from London) I visited the Gallerie Romantik which houses much of Fredrich's work. and became interested in the English and German connection, via Romanticism.