Creative Conversations/digital: Yan Wang Preston with Matthew Kluk

Sunday, July 26 | 2PM 

Artist Yan Wang Preston discusses the research and work behind her series Forest, exploring the relationship between infrastructural development and ecology. Preston is joined by scholar Matthew Kluk.

Originating from the FotoFest Meeting Place Portfolio Review for Artists, Ten by Ten is one of the FotoFest Biennial's most popular exhibitions. Presented alongside the FotoFest Biennial 2020 central exhibition, Ten by Ten (formerly known as the Discoveries of the Meeting Place), highlights ten portfolios chosen by ten international reviewers from the FotoFest Meeting Place Portfolio Review for artists in 2018.

About the guests
Yan Wang Preston is a British-Chinese artist interested in the contested conditions of nature in contemporary societies. Her major projects include Mother River (2010–14) and Forest (2010–2017). Preston’s work has won international awards including the first Prize in the Profession- al Landscape category, Sony World Photography Awards (2019); Hundred Heroines, the Royal Photographic Society (2018); the first Prize, Syngenta Photography Award (2017); and Shiseido Photographer Prize at the Three Shadows Photography Annual Award in Beijing, China (2016).

Solo exhibitions of Preston’s work have been presented at venues such as the 56th Venice Biennale, Italy; Three Gorges Museum, Chongqing China; Wuhan Art Museum, China; Gallery of Photography Ireland, Dublin; Impressions Gallery, Bradford, UK; and Xposure International Photography Festival, Sharjah, UAE. Important group shows include Dubai Photo; Syngenta Photography Award exhibition, Somerset House, London; and Pier to Pier exhibition, Liverpool, UK and Shanghai, China.

Preston’s monographs, Forest and Mother River, were both published by Hatje Cantz in 2018. Her work is also featured on numerous newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, Irish Times, European Photography, British Journal of Photography, and Chinese Photography. Her work is collected by institutions such as Wuhan Art Museum, China; Syngenta, Basel, Switzerland; Swatch, as well as private collectors worldwide.

Preston was originally trained in clinical medicine in China. She was awarded a PhD in Photography from the University of Plymouth, UK, in 2018. Besides of her artistic practice, she also lectures at the University of Huddersfield, UK.

Matthew Kluk is pursuing a PhD degree in the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University, Providence, RI. He specializes in the history and theory of photography with particular research interests in nineteenth-century visual culture, museums and exhibiting, and conceptual approaches to the medium. Before coming to study at Brown, he worked as a Curatorial Assistant in the Photography Department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2015–19) focusing on the development and exhibition of the permanent collection. He contributed substantially to numerous exhibitions including Don’t! Photography and the Art of Mistakes (2019), Carolyn Drake: Wild Pigeon (2018), and Japanese Photography from Postwar to Now (2016-17). He has also held positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA; and Art Institute of Chicago, IL. He holds an MA from the Graduate Program in the History of Art at Williams College, Williamstown, MA (2014) and a BA from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL (2012).