A thorough art-history connoisseur, Perry travelled far and wide to see different maps ranging from the 14th to the 19th century, and claims to have always been drawn to maps depicting “imaginary lands, feelings or social phenomena”. In a 2011 exhibition held at the British Museum, entitled The Tomb Of The Unknown Craftsman, the artist selected a 19th-century sailing chart from the Marshall Islands, made only of sticks and shells, and juxtaposed it to a contemporary British map showing the major landmarks on the pilgrimage route between London and Canterbury.
Map Of An Englishman (2004) and Print For A Politician (2005) were Perry’s first attempts at cartography. In Map Of An Englishman, Perry’s sarcastic commentaries on contemporary society emerge once again, here in the form of 16th and 17th-century Dutch etchings. While at first, the image resembles any other map or even fictional topography, upon closer inspection Perry’s subtle changes start to emerge, and with them the realisation that the topography does not depict a geographical land, but rather internal states and characteristics of the self, making this fictitious map a portrait. Labelling the extremities of this internal topography with “cliché” or “dreams”, but also “posh” and “romantic”, Perry expresses the multiple contradictions of his psyche, claiming that the map acted at the time he produced it as a self-portrait: “A lot of people think it’s generally like an Englishman. It is an Englishman. It is me.” The map is at the same time a particular and universal portrait of identity. In a Print For A Politician, Perry drew inspiration from Chinese scrolls to create what he calls a “playscape … an imaginative universe you spread out in front of you as a child”. The print represents a battle, only Perry has here purposefully confused and mixed the factions, so that it becomes impossible to distinguish between opposing sides. The artist described the print as multicultural and cross-temporal, claiming he made it envisioning it hanging in a politician’s office: “He might sit thinking, 'Yeah, we're going to get those people!', but then he'd look up at it and realise that it wasn't that simple.” Map Of Days and Map Of Nowhere are perhaps Perry’s better-known maps, both acting as self-portraits that guide viewers through Perry’s chaotic, ambivalent, whimsical mind. For this latter, Perry drew inspiration from the Ebstorf Map, a famous Mappa Mundi that followed the convention of mapping the world onto the Body of Christ.
In his maps, Perry’s emotional life and the inner workings of his psyche are displayed and laid open to the viewer in the form of fictitious islands and cities. Incorporating his distinctive humour, sense of satire and irony, these works are unique in Perry’s production and attest perfectly to the artist’s ongoing quest and investigation of identity, which he explores with open-minded fluidity and porosity, rejecting stableness, fixity and labels.
