Jeju Biennale, 2022.11.16. - 2023.2.12.  

Gapado Island




Current - Jeju Biennale, 2022.11.16. - 2023.2.12

Andy Hughes has four video works and two photographic works currently being exhibited during the 2022 Jeju Biennale. The video workare sited in the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art and two polycarbonate circular photographs are installed under a pagoda overlooking the ocean on Gapado Island. The biennale invited artists to participate and commissions based upon the theme 'Flowing Moon, Embracing Land', 60 artists and collectives from 16 countries including Korea are included. 

The theme of the 3rd Jeju Biennale 2022《Flowing Moon, Embracing Land》derives from finding artistic practices for global symbiosis in the era of climate crisis when new geological concepts such as the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene are raised. [Extract © Jeju Biennale 2022]

Jeju Biennale 2022

Video stills from Polyethylene Terephthalate, 2022, single-channel video.

Polyethylene Terephthalate 
In the introduction of Timothy Morton's book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World  he writes -

In The Ecological Thought, I coined the term hyperobjects to refer to things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans. A hyperobject could be a black hole. A hyperobject could be the Lago Agrio oil field in Ecuador or the Florida Everglades. A hyperobject could be the biosphere or the Solar System. A hyperobject could be the sum total of all the nuclear materials on Earth; or just the plutonium, or the uranium. A hyperobject could be a very long-lasting product of direct human manufacture, such as Styrofoam or plastic bags, or the sum of all…

Jeju Biennale 2022

Video stills from Plastic Occultation, 2022, single-channel video.

Plastic Occultation
The title of the work refers to the term occultation. This word is often used in astronomy to describe when a planet passes in front of another object, as seen by an observer. Occultation can also refer to any situation in which an object in the foreground blocks from view an object in the background.

Look closely and you will see tiny insects fly, land and take off the plastic object, each attempting to find a way out from the interior of the plastic bottle. To the bottom right you will also notice the increasing brightness of the sun as it begins to appear from behind the plastic object. When seen at scale, the circular element seems to create a sense of rotational vertigo — the sudden sensation that you're spinning or that the inside of your head is spinning. Usually, this is triggered by specific changes in your head's position, in this case, the effect is created by visual means.

The work compels the viewer to consider how the overlooked and seemingly insignificant (a wasted plastic drink bottle) can in effect possess some of the qualities that we see when looking into the furthest, farthest and deepest depths of the universe. 

Jeju Biennale 2022

Video still from Sun Hole, 2022, single-channel video.

Sun Hole
The title refers to Sun Tunnels, the large earth artwork created by American artist Nancy Holt in 1976. Holt’s massive Sun Tunnels were sited in the Great Basin Desert in Utah, arranged towards the angles of the rising and setting sun, ‘Holt brings the cosmos down to the earth and into the realm of human experience’.

Hughes created this short film as the sun set across the East China Sea on the west side of Gapado island on 21 June 2022. The sun became obscured by clouds just as it started to disappear over the horizon. The work asks the viewer to consider the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun as it effects the Earth's tides, which in turn encouraged the ocean to regurgitate plastic waste ashore. In effect, this video vignette brings the cosmic into a plastic water bottle. 

Jeju Biennale 2022

Video stills from Moon Buoy, 2022, single-channel video.

Moon Buoy
Various types of fishing floats and buoys are washed ashore all over the world. Gapado, like many places, has many types that have been lost at sea sometimes coming to rest on the shore. Hughes noticed a certain type that he’d not seen at home. Blue, transparent, red, pink and yellow coloured buoys were abundant on the island. Made from HDPE plastic, they are long-lasting and weather-resistant and can withstand contact with strong mineral acids and bases that occur naturally. The short time-lapse film takes the theme of ‘Flowing Moon, Embracing Land’, a step further. The artist asks the viewer to consider why we need to treat all kinds of matter, inanimate as well as living organisms with respect - he sets out the idea that sentience may exist only in creatures with centralised nervous systems may be inaccurate.

In the film, moonlight shadows move across the spinning buoy, and a branch or tentacle makes a gesture toward the shadow. The moon's shadow transits back and forth like the fall and rise of the tide set to an interference static soundscape. This is Moon bounce, a radio communications technique that relies on the propagation of radio waves from an Earth-based transmitter directed via reflection from the surface of the Moon back to an Earth-based receiver. These sound and visual recordings combine in this video vignette to transmit a sense of ‘aliveness’ to waste matter.
  

Gapado AiR, Artist in Residence, May - Nov 2022.

Gapado AiR

Gapado AiR, Autumn 2022

Gapado AiR hosted an open studio event to show the work of the six resident artists in 2022. It was an opportunity for the public and other visitors to explore and understand the artist's working processes and artwork created whilst living on the island for six months.

Supported
Jeju Self-Governing Province
Jeju Foundation for Arts and Culture

Gapado Air

AiR Talk 22.10.22

British artist Andy Hughes talked about his work, coinciding with his artist-in-residence exhibition at Gapado AIR. He explained his long-standing fascination with plastic pollution, the beach and arts activism. Hughes discussed a number of his projects from the discovery of floating debris as a young surfer to his expedition in Alaska and more recent exploratory work made here in Jeju Province. His recent work imaginatively draws upon the connections between sci-fi, waste ecologies and climate change. His practice draws on philosophy, literature, gaming, art and film, including archival film, as well as interfacing with scientific research.

Gapado Island
Gapado AiR Exhibition 20.10.22 - 5.11.22

Gapado Island

Gapado AiR Exhibition 20.10.22 - 5.11.22
Gapado Air

Mysterious Clean Island, Gapado AiR Exhibition

This exhibition presents a selection of works in progress from Hughes'  artist residency at Gapado AiR. Whilst living on Gapado, he noticed and observed many similarities to his home in Cornwall. The action of wind and waves on the land, oceanic and marine ecologies and increased levels of tourism are very present here and in Cornwall. Effects associated with increased globalisation are also present, with large volumes of plastic waste and debris washed ashore daily.

The title of the exhibition comes from a sign on board the Gapado ferry. It reminded Hughes' of J G Ballard's novel Concrete Island, the story examines the importance of literal debris (the wasteland) and figurative debris (outsiders of society) through the character of a car crash victim stranded on a motorway traffic island. There are many kinds of Islands of course both physical and metaphorical. For Hughes the search for meaning in all manner of things, like places and signs, is one part of his practice, thereby raising the question of what the wording Mysterious Clean Island might mean?

His work attempts to resist notions of the dispassionate, controlled observational, distant and elevated perspectives seen in some contemporary ‘environmental’ photography. By careful use of perspective and post-production methods, he imbues various objects and sites where they rest with a sense of ‘aliveness’ or ‘surreal presence. In effect, the objects are not inert or dead but alive and continue to be actants in the world where they were created, formed and rejected. The lives of objects, the spaces and places they inhabit, in real-time and their location are in effect intertwined in his mind and perhaps all of our collective consciousness. Memories of Gapado will travel back home with him and its presence will weave its mysterious presence into his mind and work for some time to come.

Notes:
J. G. Ballard was an English novelist, short story writer, satirist, and essayist known for provocative works of fiction. Waste is integral to many of his works which often reveal discomfiting truths about the ecological and social effects of mass production and consumption.


Gallery installation Gapado Island 2022

앤디 휴즈 Andy Hughes 〔Mysterious Clean Island〕 2022 가파도 마을강당 Gapado Village Hall

이번 전시는 ‘가파도 아티스트 인 레지던스’ 활동을 아직 완성되지 않은 작품의 형태로 일부 선별하여 소개한다. 가파도에 거주하면서 느낀 점은 고향인 영국 잉글랜드 남서부의 콘월과 가파도가 여러 면에서 유사하다는 점이다. 바람과 파도가 빚은 흔적, 바다와 연안의 생태계의 특성, 점점 많아지는 관광객들 등 가파도의 요즘 모습은 콘월에서도 본 모습이다. 또한, 확대되는 세계화의 상호작용은 가파도에서도 예외 없이 해변으로 매일 쓸려오는 상당한 규모의 플라스틱 쓰레기와 폐기물로 우리를 마주한다.
이번 전시의 제목은 가파도 여객선에서 발견한 JG 발라드 소설 〔콘크리트 섬〕을 연상시킨 표 지판 문구에서 아이디어를 얻었다. 소설은 고속도로 구조물인 교통섬(traffic island)에 고립된 교통사고 피해자의 이야기를 통해 ‘쓰레기’라는 존재의 중요성을 다뤘다. 소설은
말 그대로의 의미로써 ‘쓰레기’를 폐허로 나타냈고, 비유적 ‘쓰레기’로 사회에서 소외된 사람들을 등장시켰다. 세상에는 다양한 ‘섬’이 존재한다, 물리적으로 실재하는 섬, 그리고 비유적 섬. 예술가의 역할은 다양한 곳에서 의미를 찾는 것이며, 개인적으로 특정 장소와 안내판 및 간판 등을 자주 탐구한다. 그렇다면 “Mysterious”와 “Clean”이라는 영어 단어의 조합이 섬을 표현할 때 여러분은 어떤 의미로 이해되는가?

당대의 ‘환경사진’에서 자주 등장하는 감정에 흔들리지 않고, 모든 변수를 잘 제어하는 관찰자로서 거리를 둔 채 고고한 관점에서 피사체를 기록하는 그런 예술가의 시선을 피하고자 한다. 다양한 시선과 후반작업을 통해 사진에서 나타나는 여러 물체와 그 물체가 놓인 장소에 일종의 ‘생동감’ 혹은 ‘초현실적 존재감’을 부여한다.
그 결과 나타나는 효과는 사진 속 물체가 더 이상 비활성 무생물이 아닌 살아 있는 존재로서, 그 물체를 생성한 다음 형상화하고는 퇴출한 세상 안에서 여전히 작용하는 모습이 보인다. 물체의 수명, 물체가 차지하는 공간과 존재하는 위치와 장소는 결국 작가의 생각과 실시간으로 연동하고 있으며, 어쩌면 인류 공동체 전체와도 이렇게 엮여 있을 수도 있다.
  
귀국 후에도 가파도에서의 추억은 함께할 것이며, 그 존재감은 분명 신비로운, 혹은 묘한 방식으로 생각과 작업에 한동안 결합되어 있을 것이다.
참고:

JG 발라드는 영국 작가이다. 장편, 단편, 풍자, 에세이 등 다양한 형태의 작품을 집필하였으며 특히 도발적인 내용을 픽션으로 풀어내는 능력으로 이름을 알렸다. ‘폐기물’ 혹은 ‘쓰레기’는 그의 많은 작품을 관통하는 주제로 이를 통해 대량 생산 및 소비가 환경 및 사회에 끼치는 영향의 불편한 진실을 알렸다.

Gapado AiR

〔ON AiR〕AiR Lounge

연계 프로그램 2
Related Program 2
영상 스크리닝 〔ON AiR〕
Video Screening of artists' films, Gapado AiR Lounge.

An Jungju+Jun Sojung〔The Ghost in the Machine〕
Transforms, variates, fragments, and loops sounds and images collected from mass media and everyday life, creating video works with a distinctive narrative structure. Sojung Jun constructs nonlinear time-space dimensions to stir up new awareness of the history and the present or deals with the experience when material borders shift and penetrate our daily senses.

Andy Hughes〔Plastic scoop〕
Andy Hughes studied at the Royal College of Art, London. He was the first Artist in Residence at Tate Gallery St. Ives. His photographic artworks focus on the littoral zone. For more than thirty years a preoccupation with the ‘thing-ness’ of plastic, watery worlds and coastal habitats has driven his work, which interfaces with scientific research, gamification, ruinology, philosophy, literature, art and film, including archival film.

Agnese Galiotto〔Miracoli (Miracles)〕
Agnese Galiotto is an Italian painter and filmmaker living in Chiampo, a valley of the Small Dolomites. She graduated from Städelschule Frankfurt (DE) in 2021, and previously gained a BA in painting at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. Her practice combines the ancient technique of fresco painting and cinema: both mediums are for her tools to engage in elaborating narratives and developing immersive installations, while her research revolves around the relationship between human identity and the natural world.

Gapado AiR

〔ON AiR〕

앤디 휴즈 Andy Hughes 〔Plastic Scoop〕, 

Andy Hughes〔PlasticScoop〕
Grand Theft Auto V is one of the most popular video games of all time, played by millions across the globe, it has generated many controversies related to the game's known themes around gang violence, car theft and racial stereotypes. With the release of each new version, artist Andy Hughes noticed how changes in the rendering of the seascape and landscape seemed to mirror wider societal awareness of pollution issues including plastic waste and global heating. Could the increasing presence of trash and other visible pollution, and traces of climate change discourse (and its denial) within the game be a sign of an environmental subtext?

*Film funded by University of Plymouth Sustainable Earth Institute

전 세계적으로 수백만 명에게 사랑받고 있는 게임인 GTA 5(Grand
Theft Auto V, 락스타 게임즈(Rockstar Games) 제작)은 폭력 조직, 차량 절도, 인종적 편견으로 인해 많은 논란을 불러일으켰다. 앤디 휴즈는 이 게임이 업데이트될 때마다 바다와 육지 풍경이 플라스틱 폐기물에 뒤덮여가고 지구온난화의 영향이 게임 속에서도 구현되는 것을 보며, 환경오염 문제가 사회 전반에 걸쳐 더욱 부각되고 있음을 느꼈다. 게임 속 늘어나는 각종 쓰레기와 환경오염, 그리고 기후변화 담론(과 이를 부정하는 시각)의 흔적들이 일종의 숨겨진 메시지는 아닐까?
*영상 제작에 플리머스대학교 지속가능 지구연구소 자금을 지원함

Selected Previous Exhibitions

Solas_arts

Red Creek / Andy Hughes & Peggy Atherton. Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, Cornwall 4-7 November 2021. http://www.solasart.co.uk/solasarts_whats_on.html

Royal Geographic Society London

RAW TRUTHS, Royal Geographic Society, London, 2017

Two parallel worlds, many thousands of miles apart, each with its own particular relationship with the material which has rapidly come to define the modern age: plastic. On one side, the remnants of a Festival depict an almost apocalyptic scene: piles of garbage, dirt fields scattered with crushed plastic bottles, bags, balloons, single-use cups, and cheap, disposable furniture. A column of polystyrene fast food containers piled high, emerges triumphantly from a packed litter bin, while the bright lights of the festival’s famous music scene beam away in the background. On the other, the lush greenery of rural Africa. An elderly lady pours water from a small stream into a number of large plastic carrying containers. A child thrusts a dirty plastic bottle, covered in grit but very much intact, towards the camera. And, in the larger urban centres, enormous landfills surrounded by circling birds show where many single-use plastics end up on the continent, entire streets packed to bursting with colourful bags full of plastic waste.

http://geographical.co.uk/reviews/exhibitions/item/2253-raw-truth-plastic-a-journey-from-source-to-solution


Mobirise

Photo-Pioneer 2016, St Ives, Cornwall

Following on from Making Time in 2014, Photo-Pioneer will show work by William Arnold, Melanie King, Andy Hughes and Oliver Raymond-Barker.

From William Arnold’s beautiful sequence of cameraless botanical prints to Melanie King’s astronomical cyanotypes that ‘draw from the heavens’; from Andy Hughes iconic Plastic Photo-Totem to Oliver Raymond-Barker’s visceral prints exploring the nature of stone - this show is an exploration into landscape and the material potential of photography. It will be a rare chance to see contemporary photography in Cornwall and is part of an ongoing concern to develop new audiences and opportunities for the photographic arts within the county.

Learn more...

Gyre Exhibition Alaska with andy hughes and mark dion

Gyre: The Plastic Ocean 

Anchorage Museum, Alaska, USA

Gyre: The Plastic Ocean exhibition explores the relationship between humans and the ocean in a contemporary culture of consumption. For decades artists have created works that address the relationship between community and environment. In the later part of the 20th century, artists gave a voice to the environment. Artists such as Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer, Christo and Jeanne-Claude and others became interested in the social value of art.

Funded by: Anchorage Museum Association, Corporate Wetlands Restoration Partnership, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation Giles W. and Elise G. Mead Foundation, Leonard and Tannie Hyde, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Endowment for the Arts, North American Marine Environment Protection Association, Ocean Foundation, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Rasmuson Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Wells Fargo The William Randolph Hearst Foundation.

Gallery installation andy hughes and chris jordan and maritime museum, newport news

Message in a Bottle

Mariners Museum National Maritime Museum, Virginia, USA

This exhibition featured the work of two photographers, Andy Hughes and Chris Jordan. Both explore the phenomenon of mass consumerism and its environmental impact. Andy Hughes' work focuses on the accumulation of garbage washed up on the shores where he surfs. Chris Jordan's composite photos explore the "pervasiveness of our consumerism." These visually compelling and provocative works serve as a back drop for the sometimes challenging relationship between man and his environment. 
  

Mobirise

Making Time, St Ives, Cornwall
Making Time is a photographic art collective based in Cornwall interested in the engagement of science, ecology and history in contemporary photo practice.

The aim of the group through research, exhibitions and workshops is to act as a catalyst for future development in Cornwall, engaging both artists and the wider community to provide a platform of support for photographic arts.

The group formed in 2014 and that autumn presented its inaugural exhibition Making Time: New Photographic Constructions at the historic Penwith Society gallery in St.Ives. An exhibition of South West based photographic artists: William Arnold, Hannah Guy, Nicholas Hughes, Andy Hughes and Oliver Raymond-Barker, the show demonstrated the breadth and diversity of the contemporary photographic medium. Each artist’s work is informed by an exploration of contemporary issues such as: the hybridization of analogue and digital, the engagement of science and ecology in the practice of image making and the manifold histories of photography.

Learn More...

‘Surf, Civilization and Barbarism’ - Casa Cultura Okendo, Donostia, Spain

‘Surf, Civilization and Barbarism’ - Casa Cultura Okendo, Donostia, Spain

“The importance of beauty and the enjoyment of a wave, of nature vs. the economy facts and the short term development. The utopian vision of an alternative future vs the contra la razón impuesta de una modernidad irracional" - Gibus de Soultrait introduction to Surf, Civilization and Barbarism.

From Jack McCoy´s personal collection of his first photos in Uluwatu, where a virgin headland is a painful contrast to today´s chaotic development, the juxtaposition of Kai Neville´s excerpt from Dear Suburbia of the Japanese rivermouth perfection to Taishi Hirokawa´s nuclear plants, the man vs nature section which starts with Ron Stoner´s 2 photos of Killer Dana before and after the marina is built, the Superbank´s perfection created by the artificial pumping of sand, Wavegarden´s example of man replicating nature as a recurrent theme in mankind… to the virgin beauty of both Bruno Garrudo´s landscapes and finally Punta de Lobos that can be preserved of radical use of cement…. Hanging on the walls works from artists Taishi Hirokawa, Alan Van Gysen, Andy Huges, Bruno Garrudo, Craig Peterson, Jack McCoy, Iker Basterretxea, Kai Neville, Pablo Ugartetxea, Rodrigo Farias or Patrick Trefz, among 27 other participant artists.

Mobirise

Dominant Wave Theory, Maritime Museum, San Sebastian, Spain.
Works were exhibited as part of the San Sebastian Surf Film Festival, Spain.
Sponsored by Patagonia
Poster designed by David Carson

'Sancho Rodriguez, founder of the San Sebastián Surf Film Festival, shares how they brought together art, activism and audacious stunts to shake up surf culture. Now approaching its fourteenth edition, the festival was the first of its kind anywhere in the world when it was founded in 2003. It’s a celebration of cinema and independent-minded surf culture, but most importantly a place where art and music come together with surfing and activism. The festival’s success hasn’t stopped Sancho and his crew frequently using their platform to put a big middle finger up to everything they dislike in wider surfing culture – but always with a smile'...

https://www.huckmag.com/outdoor/surf/basque-surfers-took-industry-founding-festival/


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