British-Chinese artist Yan Wang Preston will be joined by Jem Southam to discuss her epic photo project Mother River (2010-2014), for which she photographed the entire 6,211km Yangtze River in China at precise 100km intervals on a large-format plate camera. Preston will talk about process, artistic concepts and share stories and personal reflection from the field trips across China.

Regarded as the ‘Mother River’, the Yangtze is the most iconic natural feature in China, standing in as the symbol of the motherland with its haloed landscapes, historical myths and legends. With the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the Yangtze is also seen as the environmental victim of China’s development. However, through embodied research, Preston discovered that the river, and the country it flows through, is much more complex and multi-layered than the above binary vision. 

Preston photographed the entire river at precise 100km intervals to find fresh views at vernacular sites. The river starts at 5,400 meters in the uninhabited zones on the Tibetan Plateau. It then traverses through China over three geological steps before joining the East China Sea at Shanghai. Its vastness in both geology and geography made the Mother River project a modern adventure as well as a personal pilgrimage.

This event is programmed to coincide with our current exhibition, Thames Log by Chloe Dewe Mathews.

This event will take place via Zoom and last approx. 1hr

You will be sent a link to join the talk on the day of the event, by 5.15pm

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If you have not received your link by 5.15pm on the day of the talk, please get in touch with [email protected]