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Student, community activist, environmentalist and artist, young Sam Inglis is on a mission. Bourree Lam sits down to chat with the boy behind the gas mask

The Fringe club is about to host an exhibition from a real up and coming artist. At just age 16, Sam Inglis will be holding his first photo exhibition at the Economist Gallery starting Wednesday 17. Already featured in Time Out’s Showcase column (‘Sky High’, issue 8), Inglis’ work has been inspired by one of our city’s biggest environmental problems.

“It’s had a huge impact on my life,” says Inglis, who suffered from asthma at a young age. Inglis wanted controversy, and more importantly he wanted to say something through his art about air pollution. With a political agenda deliberately in mind, he set out to create striking images that would impact the viewer.

His first series is shocking enough. Using himself and his family as models, he showed suffocation literally, with each model pulling plastic wrap tightly over their faces. Photographed in a pitch black room with no light other than the flash, the art experiment resulted in high contrast black and white photos. Seeing these images, you might imagine Inglis as one angry and edgy teenager.

But he’s not. So while gathering his ideas for his second series of photographs, Inglis thought he should lighten up a bit. “I didn’t want it to be too dark,” he says. So for his next project, he took cues from his surrealist idol René Magritte.

Juxtaposing Hong Kong landmarks with images of children (his two little twin sisters Rosey and Imogen volunteered for the project), Inglis imitated the masters, while adding his own personal twists. In an Andy Warhol inspired experiment, he tested colour replacements with much more accuracy than the master (however he had photo shop, Warhol didn’t) and with one extra element: gas masks. So how did his seven year old sisters feel about playing model?

“They loved it!” he says. “They really got into it, giving me suggestions like, ‘oh let’s try this!’”

Inglis and his family are no strangers to art though, his father Peter Inglis is a fulltime portrait and travel photographer, and his mother is Lindsey McAlister – the founder and director of the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation. Inglis became particularly environmentally aware at school when he took part in a project where students brought their electricity bills in. “I was shocked,” says Inglis. “From then on, I became very aware of turning off lights and recycling cans.”

Currently in his last year of secondary education at Sha Tin College, he is part of the school’s environmental action group. Inglis says he hardly has time for a social life between school work, art, and volunteering. Between the demanding International Baccalaureate program, sports, and volunteering at Kadoorie Farm, the busy teenager still makes time for art. Though Inglis plans to study geography at University, he still wants to keep his creative endeavours a big part of his life. A self proclaimed “artivist”, Inglis hopes that his audience will be motivated to start doing things big or small about our polluted city after seeing his exhibition. How’s that for teen spirit?

Bourree Lam