Andy Hughes learned to surf whilst an art student in South Wales. His art focuses on the littoral
zone and the politics of plastic waste. His photographs are preoccupied with the ‘thing-ness’ of plastic,
watery worlds andcoastal habitats and include recent ventures into gamification, ruinology and poetry.
His practice draws on philosophy, literature, art and film, includingarchival film, as well as interfacing with
scientific research.He is interestedin radical conceptions of materialism and the implications this has for politics,
ecology and the everyday way we think of others, the world, and ourselves.
He was one of three artists and international scientists invited to Alaska to join
the world's first ocean art and science expedition responding to and interpret
the issue of marine/coastal/ocean plastic pollution.
His groundbreaking book Dominant Wave Theory presents the first complete photographic study of plastic and human
waste washed ashore along the coasts of Europe and the USA. It contains expert commentary by world leading experts
including Dr Richard Thompson OBE, and Chris Hines MBE. Published by Booth-Clibborn Editions [London] and Abrams [New York].
‘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 Bittanti / Gamescenes.org
Andy Hughes recently returned to England after living on the tiny island of Gapado in South Korea.
Nominated by Clarrie Wallis, director of Turner Contemporary, he worked for six months as an artist in
residence. Artworks created were entangled with various notions of the real, the surreal, surfaces,
the ocean, circulatory systems, plastic waste and energy.
Please view this link for more information
http://gapadoair.com/en/about.php
"A garbage can, occasionally, to me at least, can be beautiful. That’s because you’re seeing. Some people are able to see that—see it and feel it. I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the aesthetically rejected subject."
Walker Evans, 1974
