Artist Profile | Andy Hughes (b.1966) | www.andyhughes.net
Andy Hughes has been exploring aspects of collisions between our increasingly packaged lifestyles and the resulting flow of waste matter. His new work includes collecting and integrating data streams about levels of toxicity in the human body and wider environment. Encaustic wax, heat, melted plastic, collected waste, 3-D capture software, dslr video, digital and analogue photography, paint and other various analogue art mediums are the ingredients for investigation, experimentation and creation. Tactility, visceral pleasure and science become combined into new photographic works. By exploration of the materiality of photography and consolidating photographic aesthetics with scientific research and contemporary concerns, Hughes creates work that engages multiple varied audiences.
Circularity Series | 47 inches wide | Andy Hughes © 2014
His previous work explored human waste products such as plastic and other discarded items
washed ashore across various beaches in the USA and Europe. For over two decades he has
worked consistently on this theme. In 2013 he travelled to Alaska, invited as part of an
international team of artists and scientists to work on the project GYRE: The Plastic Ocean. This
unique project explores the integration of science and art to document and interpret the issue of
plastic and human waste in the marine and coastal environment.
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