Absolut at New Designers – competition for emerging UK design

New Designers is an exhibition for emerging UK design, providing an opportunity for the country’s most creative and fresh thinking graduates to exhibit their work. For the fourth year running, Absolut have partnered with the exhibition to invite participating graduates to use the bottle as a blank canvas and create their own transformation of it.

Absolut Art

Absolut has been active in the art world since 1986, when it invited Andy Warhol to create the first in a series of iconic advertisements inspired by the Absolut bottle. Since then, Absolut has collaborated with more than 1000 artists on over 800 commissioned projects.

Six New Designers finalists will be invited to produce their designs on 50cm Absolut Original glass bottles live at New Designers 2014, with the pieces exhibited in advance of the winners being announced. Each winner will receive £500 of artists’ materials to help them continue their practice after graduation, and their work will be exhibited for one year in the foyer of the Absolut UK London offices.

Past winners of the Absolut prize include Harriet Riddell who live-machine stitched drawings of New Designers visitors and exhibitors onto an Absolut shaped canvas, creating a vibrant and visual artwork. With the materials Harriet won in the competition, she was able to become mobile and take her stitching to the public. This has included portrait stitching at Greenwich Market. She has also just completed a trip to India where she live stitched her way around the country.

For the duration of the exhibition, Absolut run an art salon where the public are invited to design their own transformation of the Absolut bottle and enter a competition to win a bar tab of £100 for themselves and three friends.

An Absolut Art Talks on 26 June with a panel of respected industry guests including Ben Chatfield, Creative Director of graphic design agency Bravo Charlie Mike Hotel and Catherine Ince, Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery will look at Transformation and Design, discussing ways in which great designers transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Absolut at New Designers

Dates: 25 – 28 June 2014

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