Andy Hughes was born in 1966 in Castleford, Yorkshire, he developed an interest in the seascape and landscape after learning to surf whilst at Art College in Wales. He obtained a First Class Degree in Fine Art at Cardiff University and an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London.

Andy Hughes’ photographic work explores the littoral zone and the politics of waste. 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 project was a world first and unique project that explored the integration of science and art to document and interpret the issue of plastic and human waste in the marine and coastal environment. He was the first Artist in Residence at Tate Gallery St. Ives and short-listed reserve residency artist for the Arts Council England Antarctic Fellowship. His previous work explores human scale 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 [Pam Longobardi, Mark Dion, Alexis Rockman, Sonya Kelliher-Combs, Carl Safina] to work on the project GYRE: The Plastic Ocean. 

Some of Andy Hughes work:

I like how he represents Anthropocene through the use of plastic on a beach. People littering is a world wide problem, 12 million tonnes of plastic finds its way into the ocean every single year. 9.5 million tonnes of this enters the ocean from the land with 1.75 tonnes being chucked into the sea directly from the fishing a shipping industry. There are approximately 51 trillion microscopic pieces of plastic, weighing 269,000 tons.