In the mid-1960s, Warhol carried his consumer-product imagery into the realm of sculpture

In the mid-1960s, Warhol carried his consumer-product imagery into the realm of sculpture. Calling to mind a factory assembly line, Warhol employed carpenters to construct numerous plywood boxes identical in size and shape to supermarket cartons. With assistance from Gerard Malanga and Billy Linich, he painted and silkscreened the boxes with different consumer product logos: Kellogg’s corn flakes, Brillo soap pads, Mott’s apple juice, Del Monte peaches, and Heinz ketchup. The finished sculptures were virtually indistinguishable from their cardboard supermarket counterparts. Warhol first exhibited these at the Stable Gallery in 1964, cramming the space with stacked boxes that recalled a cramped grocery warehouse. He invited collectors to buy them by the stack, and, though they did not sell well, the boxes caused controversy. In reference to his boxes, Warhol later said that he “wanted something ordinary,” and it was this mundane, commercial subject matter that infuriated the critics. The perfectly blank “machine-made” look of Warhol’s boxes contrasted sharply with the gestural brushstrokes of abstract expressionist paintings. I wanted to try myself in sculpture, can you help me to find Australian analogs to Brillo Boxes?