User:Flower sand/sandbox/Andy Hughes Photographic Artist

Andy Hughes (born 1966) is a British Artist and photographer based in Cornwall, England.

Career
Since 1990, his photographic work has focused on the littoral zone and the politics of plastic waste. In 1993 he was the first artist in residence at the Tate Gallery, St Ives. His photographic artworks are preoccupied with the ‘thing-ness of plastic, watery worlds and coastal habitats and include recent ventures into gamification, ruinology and poetry. His practice, therefore, draws on philosophy, literature, art and film, including archival film, as well as interfacing with scientific research. He is interested in radical conceptions of materialism and the implications this has for politics, ecology and the everyday way we think of others, the world, and ourselves. In 2007, Booth-Clibborn Editions (London) and Abrams Books (NY) produced a photo-essay book entitled Dominant Wave Theory that included photographs and essays by Dr Richard Thompson and other writers and commentators.

In 2013 Hughes was a selected artist to join the GYRE: Plastic Ocean Expedition, the worlds first art-science research expedition that assembled a team of notable marine scientists, journalists, filmmakers and artists to trawl remote Alaskan coastlines and to document collaboratively the impacts of plastic pollution. His colleagues on the expedition included chief expedition scientist Carl Safina, artist Mark Dion, filmmaker J.J. Kelly, and others: all of these are featured in a twenty-minute National Geographic film, GYRE, which aired in 2013. The artistic outcomes from this expedition were shown first at the exhibition entitled Gyre: The Plastic Ocean at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center in Anchorage, Alaska. An exhibition later travelled to the CDC's Museum in Atlanta, Georgia and other museums across the U.S. The book Gyre: The Plastic Ocean was published in 2014 by Abrams edited by Julie Decker.

In 2019 Hughes was awarded a Creative Award funded by the Sustainable Earth Institute at the University of Plymouth to create a video artwork called Plastic Scoop.

Awards

 * 2019 Sustainable Earth Institute Creative Fellowship.
 * 2006 Arts Council England, Funding Grant.
 * 1995 Artist-in-Residence at Tate Gallery, St Ives.

Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Art Category:Environmental artists Category:1966 births Category:Living people