Photo: Jason Lee

Photo: Jason Lee

Materials: Absolut Vodka bottle, paint pallet, ten and five pound notes, rigging, blue paint.

Photo: Mark Colyer

Studio 1:1 gallery, Redchurch Street, London. Photo: Jo Newman

Ths was the oldest piece of work in the show as I had actually made it twelve years before in 1994 when I was student at the RCA. The Absolut vodka company approached the college with some prize money for the students if they made an artwork that used the Absolut vodka bottle. Unbeknown to us in the sculpture department at the time, the bottles they gave us had actually been full. The painting department had had a big party with it all and we got their empties.

Being quite an idealistic student I felt the whole thing was just a ploy to get us to make naff Absolut vodka promotional gimmicks. In reaction to this I tried to make something that I thought would subvert this cynical blurring of the line between art and advertising and made a 'ship in a bottle' but out of money. I always felt that it failed in this objective and I didn't win any prize money either. Consequently I named it 'Absolut shit in a bottle'.

​The dualistic thinking that went into it however was the perfect fit for 'Offer Must End Soon'.