He was the first Artist in Residence at Tate Gallery St. Ives and short-listed reserve residency artist for the Arts Council England Antarctic Fellowship. He has supported many non-profit and NGO’s such as Surfers Against Sewage, The Marine Conservation Society, Surfrider Foundation and the Plastic Pollution Coalition (Los Angeles).
In 1989 Hughes began a thirty year odyssey making photographs of washed up material along the coastline. From Wales to Alaska and from Califorina to Scotland, New York and Cornwall his continued obsession seems even more relevant - as the world continues to wake up to the problems associated with mass consumersism and a throw-away global society, his work seems even more prescient.
Hughes' work explores the littoral zone and the politics of plastic waste. A book called Dominant Wave Theory that includes essays by world leading scientists, published by Booth-Clibborn Editions & Abrams, New York, marks this exploration.
He was recently invited to Alaska as one of three international artists and seven scientists to work on the project ‘Gyre: The Plastic Ocean’. ‘Gyre’ was a world first and unique project that explored the integration of science and art to document and interpret the issue of plastic pollution in the marine and coastal environment.
Andy Hughes photographic work explores the littoral zone and the politics of waste. He is one of the first artist photographers who explored plastic as metaphor, subject and pollutant. It was in the late 1980's when as an art student he learned to surf and became concerned about the increasing levels of human sewage and plastic he observed in the sea. He lives and works in Cornwall, England.
‘Very few directors have tackled the complex relationship between environmental issues and digital games. With Plastic Scoop, Andy Hughes makes that connection painfully manifest. By appropriating both the aesthetics of video games and the language of vintage promotional videos and other archival material, à la Adam Curtis, Hughes reminds us that we have become aliens to our own planet’.
Matteo Barretti / Gamescenes.org
PlasticScoop
A Machinima Film - Funded by Sustainable Earth Institute, Plymouth University