A RENOWNED artist is turning plastic bottles into amazing sculptures and teaching youngsters some new skills.

Veronika Richterová’s PET project sees discarded plastic bottles turn into weird and wonderful sculptures and has been at Festival Place this week showing her skills.

Veronika, who calls her creations PET-ART, has taken over the centre’s Porchester Square until Saturday, helping shoppers let their imaginations run wild with two free plastic sculpture workshops a day.

In the run-up to the event, Festival Place had called on families to donate as many plastic bottles and plastic bottle caps as they can to support the project, part of its Trash to Treasure series of environmentally-friendly activities over the school holidays.

To encourage donations, a series of eye-catching Recyclabots – named Maggie Zine, Alan Minium, Bev Ridge, Cap‘n Lidov, and Diana Thirst – have gone on display around the centre.

There are also plastics recycling drop-off points now in Porchester Square.

Veronika, who has worked with plastic bottles since 2004, has displayed her works at more than 40 exhibitions in her native Czech Republic and as far afield as Cuba, Taiwan and Milan.