Land/Sea National Museum Wales 2021

10 July 2021 – 27 February 2022, 
National Museum Wales at Oriel y Parc, St Davids, SA62 6NW

In his solo museum show, Mike Perry brings our attention to the environmental destruction happening on our doorsteps. Rather than distant locations such as melting glaciers or burning rainforests, Perry focuses his lens on our National Parks. Despite the aesthetic beauty of his images, they shed a very different light on the landscape than we are accustomed to seeing in tourist brochures or romantic paintings. Instead of being areas of ‘unspoilt wilderness’ or ‘natural beauty’, Perry reveals that our National Parks are often dominated by unsustainable farming practices that threaten biodiversity. His work is an urgent reminder that the environmental problems in our areas of natural beauty often go unnoticed – a message that is all the more resonant when exhibited in a gallery that is itself a gateway to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

In this adaption of his touring exhibition Land/Sea, Perry includes new works that suggest the narrative around the COP26 Climate Conference should go beyond carbon reduction and embrace wider issues of biodiversity and species extinction. New works include Ash Dieback, Moonlight, 2020, a melancholic reminder of the ‘other pandemic’ sweeping the British countryside, Hedgerow Confusion, 2020, a composite of two photographs suggesting climate change has already thrown our native trees out of sync with their environment, Flailed Hawthorn 2020 that alludes to a farming culture that wants to tidy up nature rather than let it flourish, Burnt Fertilizer Bags (Red, White & Blue) 2019, an iconic politically loaded lump of congealed plastic and Common Land 2020, a scene from an ‘idyllic’ picnic spot in the Welsh hills which the artist suggests may not be so idyllic !

The exhibition is curated by National Museum Wales and Mike Perry.

In Conversation: Mike Perry & Bronwen Colquhoun (Online Event) 22 September 7:00pm – 8:00pm 
Find out more here