{"product_id":"with-love-from-an-invader-rhododendrons-china-empire-and-me","title":"Yan Wang Preston — With Love. From an Invader: Rhododendrons, Empire, China and Me","description":"\u003cp\u003eA year spent with one heart-shaped rhododendron in Lancashire, and a look at what it means to call a plant an invader.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn alternate days between 17 March 2020 and 16 March 2021, Yan Wang Preston went back to a single \u003cem\u003eRhododendron ponticum\u003c\/em\u003e bush in Burnley to photograph it. Motion-triggered infrared cameras caught more than 20 species of animal there, a sound recorder picked up over 45 species of bird, and across the seasons she gathered fallen leaves, seed capsules, aborted buds and spent flowers from a second shrub.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOnce prized in the Victorian enthusiasm for rhododendrons, \u003cem\u003eR. ponticum\u003c\/em\u003e is now treated as an invasive species. Wang Preston, a Chinese British artist who came to Britain from Beijing at twenty, sets that judgement against her own life as a migrant and argues that the bush sustains local wildlife rather than threatening it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh co-published the book and contributed two sets of historical images from its archive. Wang Preston writes one of the essays; the others are by Bergit Arends, Matthew Gandy, Emma Nicolson, Alan Elliott, Michael Pritchard, Monty Adkins and Liam Devlin. There is also a poem by Kate Kinoshita and an interview with Cosima Towneley. Carel Fransen designed it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Eriskay Connection, 2025. 320 pages, softcover with tabs, 17 x 24 cm.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Eriskay Connection","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56567179018571,"sku":"9789493363212","price":320.0,"currency_code":"DKK","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0968\/0401\/2363\/files\/simone-cover-a83.jpg?v=1791199614","url":"https:\/\/shop.simonebook.services\/products\/with-love-from-an-invader-rhododendrons-china-empire-and-me","provider":"Simone Book Services","version":"1.0","type":"link"}