Mike Perry: Land/Sea

Exhibition

Mike Perry’s work engages with significant and pressing environmental issues, in particular the tension between human activity and interventions in the natural environment, and the fragility of the planet’s ecosystems.

This major new exhibition brings together recent bodies of work addressing how the natural biodiversity of landscapes and marine environments is undermined and made toxic by human neglect, agricultural mismanagement and the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of long-term sustainability.

Combining conceptual aesthetics with a pressing concern for the marine environment, Perry’s images shed a different light on the health of the seascapes one might see in tourist brochures.

Môr Plastig (welsh for ‘Plastic Sea’) is an ongoing body of work that classifies objects washed up by the sea into groupings; bottles, shoes, grids, abstracts, and others. By using a high-resolution camera to capture the surface detail, the artist allows the viewer to ‘read’ markings and scars etched into the objects by the ocean over months and, in some cases, years. The viewer is intrigued and challenged by how a polluting object can be so aesthetically appealing.

In Perry’s words, “in addition to seeing these pieces as symbols of over-consumption and disregard for the environment, I also see them as evidence of the beauty and power of nature to sculpt our world”.

Land/Sea is originally produced by Ffotogallery, Cardiff, and curated by David Drake, Ffotogallery, and Ben Borthwick, Plymouth Arts Centre. The exhibition in MOSTYN has been developed in dialogue with Adam Carr, Visual Arts Programme Curator, and Alfredo Cramerotti, Director. The accompanying publication includes contributions from the writers George Monbiot and Skye Sherwin.

Further Information

The artists’s website

Information on his previous exhibition at Ffotogallery