Award winning British Chinese artist’s work comes to Touchstones Rochdale

Yan Preston: A Circle of 127 Yangtze River Stones at Glacier

3 More Image(s) In Gallery

Award winning British Chinese artist’s work comes to Touchstones Rochdale

A new exhibition of photography and film works by Chinese born, West Yorkshire based artist Yan Preston opens at Touchstones Rochdale on Saturday 5 April.

Born in Henan Province in central China, Preston originally embarked on a medical career, entering the prestigious Shanghai Medical University to study Clinical Medicine in 1994 and subsequently qualified as an anaesthetist in China. In 2005 Preston moved to England with her husband, who is from Heywood, Lancashire. Since then she has pursued a new life as a photographer, completing an MA in Visual Arts at Bradford College in 2009. She is now completing a PhD in Photography at the University of Plymouth.

Preston’s artistic career has been fruitful in the last eight years. Her work has been shown in national and international venues such as the National Portrait Gallery in London (2006), York Art Gallery (2010), the Noorderlicht Photography Festival in the Netherlands (2012), the CENTER Photography Festival in New Mexico, USA (2013) and the 501 Artspace in Chongqing, China (2013). She has won a number of awards such as the Third Prize, Curator’s Choice Awards by CENTER in Santa Fe, USA (2013). In 2014, Preston will complete her long-term project on the Yangtze River in China and this exhibition forms part of the project. The exhibition at Touchstones Rochdale runs until 14 June 2014.

Preston says: “The works presented in this exhibition re-enact my efforts to be ‘one’ with the Yangtze River - Chinese people’s Mother River. As the most iconic waterway in China, the 6,211km long Yangtze River embraces its first water drops from the glaciers in the heartland of Tibetan Plateau. It then pushes through the deepest gorges in the world, creates the fertile soil in the south of China, and makes the landmass for Shanghai on its journey to the East China Sea and the Pacific Ocean.”

The home to over 40% of China’s population, the Yangtze is the physical carrier of Chinese history. The rapid industrialisation and urbanisation in China are transforming the Yangtze landscapes, reflecting the changing face of China. Preston’s work captures these changes and also records her journeys to reconnect with the country of her birth after a number of years away.

Each work in the exhibition has a perfomative element which is recorded using photography and film. These include the two-part photographic work ‘A Circle of 127 Yangtze River Stones’ made on the Gangjiaquba Glacier on the Tibetan Plateau and again in the contrasting urban location of Kuixinglou Public Square in downtown Chongqing where Preston holds each stone in her hand for 10 seconds before they are placed in a circle on the ground.

In the film work ‘127 stones carved by me and being touched by the Yangtze River, hopefully for ever’, Preston sits on a tiny stool by a small tributary of the Yangtze River for a week. During such time she hand carves 127 Tibetan stones before leaving them in the river forever. Such meditative actions draw out the connection between herself, the river and the surrounding industrialisation.

Touchstones Rochdale is managed by the Link4Life Cultural Trust and is located on The Esplanade, Rochdale, OL16 1AQ. We are open Tuesday to Saturday 10am – 5pm. Admission is FREE.

For further information call 01706 924492 or visit www.link4life.org/touchstones