About The Exhibition
Belfast Exposed’s Street View presents Yan Wang Preston’s three bodies of work produced in the last decade, for which she explores ideas around landscape photography, identity and the environment through epic journeys across both time and space. The exhibition explores the politics of landscape representation and its association with national identities, nature, and the environment. This exhibition, and also Aeon by Marcel Rickli showcased in Gallery 1, are underpinned by a concern and reverence for the environment and demonstrates Belfast Exposed's commitment to show work that focuses on and highlights environmental issues.
Video link: Street View: Yan Wang Preston
The exhibition showcases three separate series from her earlier performance work, Hé – River Together, in which she touched and swam in the Yangtze River in China in order to have a bodily connection with her motherland. It then reviews her acclaimed project Mother River, for which she photographed the entire 6,211km Yangtze River at precise 100km intervals on a large-format plate camera. Finally, the exhibition tells the tree stories from her award-winning work: Forest which traces the journey of transplanted old trees in China while investigating the complexity of urban nature.
Street View
The award-winning 'Street View' provides a multimedia exhibition experience to increase the accessibility and visibility of photography on the streets of Belfast. Street View is a large digital window display, complimented with audio narratives, that showcases contemporary artwork by internationally renowned and local emerging photographers to an external audience on the streets of Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter.
Belfast Exposed believe photography is for everyone, it is accessible, meaningful and has the ability to tell stories, allowing us to create dialogue and reflect upon our history, inform our present and inspire a positive future. Street View is another opportunity to extend our vision beyond the confines of the gallery.
The Artists
Yan Wang Preston
Dr Yan Wang Preston is a British-Chinese artist interested in the politics of landscape representation and its association with national identities, nature, and the environment. Her endurance-driven work often integrates documentary and landscape photography with land and performance art.
Preston’s work has won major international awards such as the 1st Prize in Professional Landscape and Sony World Photography Awards. Preston’s work has been presented internationally in solo exhibitions in locations including the Gallery of Photography Ireland, Wuhan Art Museum, China, and Open Eye Gallery, UK and important group shows including The Art of Trees, Gund Gallery, Ohio, USA , Ten by Ten, Fotofest, USA.
Preston’s monographs ‘Forest’ and ‘Mother River’ are both published by Hatje Cantz in 2018. Her work has been featured in numerous journals, newspapers and online platforms.
Acknowledgements
‘Street View: Yan Preston' at Belfast Exposed is generously supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council.