These selected images come from Hughes' Glastonbury Opus series. They explore tensions between the seductive depiction of colour, sculptural forms with an underlying narrative that describes a type of environmental degradation that results from a large festival event. Gatherings like this where tens of thousands of people congregate generate huge quantities of waste, the images attempt to raise questions about wider human behaviour and mass consumption. These photographs do not attempt to simply use the rhetoric of documentary photography when seen in the wider context of Hughes previous work they form part of his multidisciplinary practice.

In the spring of 2015, Melinda Watson at RawFoundationUK talked to Andy about supporting their Making Waves ‘Plastic- Free Festival’ Campaign at Glastonbury Festival. They provide a range of learning programmes, campaign and collaborate on priority waste streams and behaviour change. Everything they do is systems-focused, solution-oriented and change-driven. Supporting this NGO's Hughes created a number of images [not shown here], he attended the festival in 2015 and 2016, Hughes will return to Glastonbury for the 50th anniversary in 2020.

“Where fire really burns and the light itself burns your eyes, where songs are the most beautiful songs you have ever heard, and emotions passed over in daily life take on a horrifying, uncanny hue”

― Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World