Peter Atkins

'The Bottle Shop', 2025 is part of Peter Atkins’ ongoing series of “Readymade Abstractions” in which the artist uses aspects of everyday life—for example, signage, billboards and product packaging—as the inspiration for his work, appropriating elements from these sources to create his own, more distilled, abstract versions. This series of three prints was inspired by a poster advertising Gin, Vodka and White Rum displayed outside a local bottle shop along Melbourne’s bustling Sydney Road, not far from the artist’s home and studio. Atkins has reimagined the starburst forms on this poster in three colourways to reference specific cocktails, with the large silver form (consistent across all three prints) representing the clear liquid of the three white spirits. The resulting works are titled 'Gin and Tonic', 'Vodka and Orange' and 'Martini'. The transparency of the overlaid forms in these striking prints also suggests a sense of movement and fluidity, of liquids being mixed, combining to blend these classic cocktails.