BA (Hons) Fine Art Lecturer Tony Charles is displaying his work Still Life Un-painted at an exhibition at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art unpicking the iconic Middlesbrough Bottle of Notes sculpture, ‘The Secret Lives of Bottle of Notes: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.’ The exhibition features work from the sculptures original designers including sketches, models, and documents by artists Oldenburg and van Bruggen, offering a glimpse into the creative process behind the Bottle of Notes. Displays of archival images and documents trace the sculpture’s origins, fabrication, and reception. The exhibition also features a number of works from designers that “share imaginative responses to themes of place and identity.”

The Secret Lives of Bottle of Notes: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Through this exhibition visitors can discover the story behind  Bottle of Notes (1993), Middlesbrough’s iconic public sculpture and the only UK work by celebrated artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Over its 30-year life this nine-metre-tall steel bottle has been adopted as a symbol for the Tees Valley.

The Secret Lives of Bottle of Notes, delves into how public art shapes identity and place. Through historical and contemporary artworks, archival materials, and creative contributions from Tees Valley communities, the exhibition traces the making of this significant sculpture, its meaning to the region, and its lasting impact on Middlesbrough’s cultural landscape.

Still Life Unpainted By Tony Charles

‘Still Life Unpainted’ is a work that employs found objects. However, through these objects, the work explores, with more emphasis, matters surrounding painting. This investigation into the relationship between sculpture and the two-dimensional representation of objects began by further considering formal issues from a sculptural perspective. This involved the industry-related process of grinding, employed to remove the identity of objects and to provide a painterly patina directly associated with the theme of ‘Still Life’ painting. The traditional notion that ‘Still Life’ inhabits a place at the bottom of a painting hierarchy due to its depiction of non-heroic objects, objects that we live with every day, has become so familiar that we often overlook them as being mundane.

In ‘Still Life Unpainted’ these mundane objects are brought into view and reinvigorated just as they so often are in traditional ‘Still Life’ painting. The objects used here are fire extinguishers, contemporary everyday objects that are generally ignored unless needed, and they are stripped of paint and transformed using the industrial process. The work focusses on how two-dimensional ‘Still Life’ painting has been historically understood to render the object visually unnecessary, as the object is transcribed to become the subject of a painting with all its visual information transformed into two dimensions. This suggests yet another hierarchy where painting conveys superiority over the object, a notion that is seen to underpin the attitude of art’s superiority over craft;

‘Still Life Unpainted’ seeks to embrace painterly concerns with reference to this most enduring genre whilst retaining the visual necessity of the object itself, enabling the notions surrounding object and subject to merge. This is not without irony. The removal of identity to bring objects into sharper focus and the removal of paint in an

allusion to painting is a conceptual tension that reinforces the investigation. The works are informed by painting and the objects have a painterly patina, yet the paint has been removed by an industrial process to achieve a more striking visual impact.

The labour-intensive process, choice of materials and repetition evoke ideas of industry and routine. It recalls, with its economy of means and tonal qualities, the work of Giorgio Morandi, but also with its painterly texture reminiscent of brushstrokes, the work of Cezanne, and with its gestured marks, Impressionist paint application.

Visitors can view the exhibition and Tony’s work until Sunday 5th October 2025. If you are interested in studying Fine Art at degree-level make sure you check out our fantastic degree programme here.