TWO Tweed artists will use the Swell Sculpture Festival at Currumbin to spread their Message in a Bottle and highlight the effects plastics have on the environment.

Hastings Point team Lauren Gray and Steven Hing teamed up to create their artistic work made up entirely of disposable plastics such as bottle tops.

Gray, who was involved with the Swell Festival in 2014, said the inspiration for Message in a Bottle came from working with recycled plastics and materials.

“Steve was my go-to guy in 2014, so this year we collaborated with the inspiration of working with things that are easily recyclable,” she said.

“The first Swell it was about plastic bags, then it became plastic bottle lids and the idea then evolved to plastic bottles.”

“We want to get people thinking about plastics more. You need to realise the gravity behind single use plastic, which all ends up in the ocean or landfill and doesn’t decompose.”

Gray - a primary school art teacher - has been collecting bottle caps for a year-and-a-half in preparation for the artwork, with the help of students.

After Hing found a way to bend conduit to create each giant bottles’ frame, the pair have spent months formulating their work, which includes 2D plastic bottle cut-outs, complete with bottle tops, lids, plastic bottle strips and collected plastic junk encased in a perspex box.

Each giant bottle will be placed in or on the sand at Swell, to create a vision of a rubbish dump on the beach that reflects the nature of plastic and its impact on the ocean and environment.

“It takes 450 years for a plastic bottle to decompose. Therefore every piece of plastic ever made still exists today,” Gray and Hing said in their artist statement.

“It has become the ugly face of our modern single use society.

“It is time to recognise the message in a bottle and examine how we use our non-renewable resources.”

The 14th annual Swell Sculpture Festival at Currumbin Beach gets underway on September 9 and features over 50 works by local, national and international artists.

For more on artists, visit: Swell Sculpture Festival online.