National Museum Wales

March 2026 - December 2026. Green Gorse, Wales 2003

Mike Perry Green Gorse Wales 2003, Richard Long Blaenau Ffestiniog Circle 2011, Terry Setch Towards Tavernock 1993

Green Gorse, Wales 2003

In Green Gorse, Pembrokeshire, 2003, Perry frames a slab of green vegetation against a neutral white sky to provide a formal minimalist abstraction. Shooting up hill, from the coastal path, with no other form of reference it is difficult to get a feeling for the position of the artist. We could well be looking down over an emerald green rainforest as in Alex Hutte’s dramatic photographs in South America. Instead, closer inspection reveals only scraggy green gorse. A monochrome abstraction resulting from monoculture farming. Maybe this tangled growth, that has taken over vast areas of coastal land due to continuous sheep grazing, is West Wales’s equivalent of Europe’s grand vertical forests.