Cape Town based artist Michael Amery, showcased his first solo show of drawings, Tress by Man at David Krut Projects Cape Town in 2016. As a freelancer in the advertising industry, he tackles the effect of consumer culture on the natural world via a collection of accomplished drawings in charcoal and India ink.
Amery is interested in themes pertaining to how man shapes the land: the spaces that we create, manipulate and destroy. He sees a world where land and resources are divided up into geometric shapes and rows, often with mathematical precision, and no space is left unaccounted for. His drawings mimic the techniques and systems of industry imposed on the natural world. Symmetry, repetition, calculation: the carving up of the landscape. Amery comments that through his work we “glimpse the disquieting commodification of the natural world required to sustain our consumer culture.”