There's nothing like an inspired collaboration to get our panties moist and last night we bore witness to the most avant garde slice of performance art vs branding we'd ever seen. Street art hero D*Face has teamed up with Smirnoff: the elusive sprayer has designed bespoke limited edition vodka bottles and to celebrate this double-teaming, they threw a live art event at East London's historical Wilton Music Hall.

After an anticipatory wait whilst slurping steaming magic potion cocktails from laboratory flasks, the art experiment began. Within the crumbling walls of the hall's inner sanctum a production line of five masked workers individually and painstakingly hand stencilled D*Face's iconic imagery onto a cement-set vodka bottle.

Set like lab rats in an enclosed cage, we could only peer in precariously though tiny windows. Every so often the foremen would sound the klaxon and Thermos' were duly whipped out for a quick tea break.

Post production came quality control: each cement-clad bottle was escorted individually to an inspector perched centre stage who carefully scrutinised each graffitied masterpiece ensuring it was good enough for, well not consumption, moreover veneration from atop one's mantlepiece, surely?

Of course, we got to take home one of the gargantuan cemented bottles (thankfully for the sake of our puny arms) in its own army-style satchel.

“The 'art bottle' path is well trodden" claims D*Face. "When I was first approached by Smirnoff, this couldn't just be another shrink wrapped bottle where the artist has almost been removed from the equation. It was critical to me that the end result stood out and I think this collaboration reflects that.”

Posted on June 14, 2012 at 11:44:24 by The Real Runway