Mike Perry BRITISH, b. 1960

Mike Perry’s photographs examine the interactions of landscapes, nature and industrial society. Over the last 20 years his practice has focused on Britain’s National Parks and increasingly the immediate surroundings of Pembrokeshire where he lives and works, questioning the romantic mythology of national parks as areas of wilderness and natural beauty.

He uses large format photography in order to simultaneously capture the painterly tones and aesthetic qualities of the landscape’s surface as well as detailing the impacts of humanity’s exploitation of nature for commercial gains. Series of smaller photographs show objects found in the landscape at 1:1 scale, capturing the effect of natural processes on the surfaces of industrially produced materials. Discussing the tension between the seductive surfaces and worrying content of his work, he commented that ‘as well as highlighting the overconsumption and pollution they show nature’s ability to shape our world whether we humans are here or not’

Perry’s work has been exhibited at National Museum Wales (2012), The Royal Academy of Arts (2014), the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and Foundling Museum (2016). In 2017 he was included in the British Arts Council Collection exhibition British Landscape and The Imagination at Towner Art Gallery. His solo exhibition Land/Sea received Arts Council Wales touring funds and travelled between Plymouth Arts Centre, Ffotogallery, Mostyn and Aberystwyth Arts Centre during 2017-18, and will open at Thelma Hubert Gallery and Exeter University in 2020. He represented Wales at the 2018 Interceltique Arts Festival in Lorient, France and in 2020/21 he has a solo exhibition at National Museum Wales’s Oriel y Parc. Perry was awarded a Creative Wales Award in 2015.

Mike Perry was born in Birmingham in 1960. He has a post graduate degree in economics and is involved in a number of environmental projects. He has worked with Greenpeace, was a founding director of the green energy firm solarcentury, and presented to the Treasury on culture and climate change with economist Nicholas Stern and artist Antony Gormley.  He was invited to the first Tipping Point symposium on climate change between leading scientists and artists at Oxford University and is currently in the process of rewilding a small holding in West Wales.