Art made from plastic waste in Hong Kong – think styrofoam fruit wrappers and plastic egg cartons – is the hallmark of this eco artist

Agnes Pang’s elephant sculpture made of discarded plastic egg cartons joins similar work by local pupils on show at a shopping centre in Tsz Wan Shan

The artist-environmentalist’s upcoming solo show includes a 4m-high mural of thousands of blossoms crafted from non-biodegradable styrofoam food wrappers

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Eco-artist Agnes Pang works on her elephant sculpture, made of waste plastic egg cartons covered with flowers made of supermarket packaging, at Tsz Wan Shan Shopping Centre, in Hong Kong. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Published: 5:15pm, 8 Aug 2022Updated: 5:43pm, 8 Aug 2022

Agnes Pang Shuk-yee was sweating under the noonday sun recently on the rooftop of Hong Kong’s Tsz Wan Shan Shopping Centre, a complex ringed by public housing estates in Kowloon’s Wong Tai Sin district.

She was working on a sculpture 1.5 metres (5ft) high of an elephant, whose translucent body had been constructed from discarded plastic egg cartons. She was dotting it with hundreds of rainbow-coloured flowers made of supermarket packaging.

It was so hot outside that the glue in her glue gun melted.

The finished sculpture is on show inside a makeshift rooftop gallery at the shopping centre in August, together with art by local primary school pupils made out of 2,000 used egg cartons.

Pang’s elephant together with eco-art creations by local pupils at the Tsz Wan Shan Shopping Centre. Photo: Link Reit

Pang does not eschew conventional venues entirely and has exhibited at The Fringe Club and PMQ in the past two years. But her heart is in community art.