Emulsion and salvaged aluminium drinks cans on wood in wood box frame.

98x84x10cm

£1,500

An open display case holding 30 salvaged aluminium drinks cans – collected within a one mile radius of the artist’s house over a period of one week.

Coca-Cola is arguably the most iconic and recognisable drinks brand ever. To satisfy this popularity and increase profits, many beverage manufacturers have chosen to sell their drinks in either aluminium cans or plastic bottles. Despite the fact both these materials are recyclable, they are discarded throughout towns, cities and our natural environment in such quantities and with such regularity, that to someone visiting our planet for the first time, they would appear to be part of the flora. Stare deep enough into any hedgerow in the country and you’ll see one or many discarded bottles and cans.

In places where these objects become gradually buried over time, this ‘throw-away culture’ creates a garish geological layer of branded packaging in the anthropocene. Future archaeologists will be digging past logos and slogans to get to the bones, relics and fossils of the past.  

Display cases are used to exhibit collections of specimens, taken from the ‘wild’ (like plants and insects), in museums. This is a display case exhibiting our ‘throw-away culture’, an artwork at the crossroads of culture, ecology, geology and anthropology.

…America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola too. A coke is a coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking…

Andy Warhol