Catherine Yass

Catherine Yass has found beauty in China's monolithic Three Gorges Dam, says Andrew Mead

The last film I saw by the artist Catherine Yass was shot from a crane on a building site at Canary Wharf. Now Yass has roamed further afield to record one of the largest construction projects in history – the Three Gorges Dam on China's Yangtze River – and the results are at the Alison Jacques Gallery in central London until 23 February. The main exhibit is Lock: two films projected simultaneously on opposite walls of the gallery, looking forwards and backwards from a ship as it negotiates one of the locks that circumvent the dam. On a hazy day we glide to a halt between high concrete walls, watch the water level slowly rise, and then emerge cautiously onto the Yangtze as the massive lock-gates slide shut behind us. Tiny figures scuttling around on the ship's prow give a sense of scale, while sudden outbursts of sound bring the scene alive.
As the press release notes, this dam has displaced over a million people and alarmed archaeologists and ecologists. Such matters appear to be incidental to Yass, as a series of her large light-box images confirms. One features the same lock that was in the film but now empty. Beneath a pure blue sky the water barely ripples and the huge structure has the aura of a monument. In the 1920s Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn eulogised American grain elevators with their sheer cliffs of concrete. 'From pure function comes abstract beauty', wrote Mendelsohn. It seems that Yass totally agrees.