In a Queensland cultural vernacular, the Bundaberg Rum bottle is an iconic, ready-made, glass object. Across these works, taken from ‘Painted Bottles’ series 1988–89, Lucy Coolwell has painted three of the bottles in the colours of the Aboriginal flag: black, yellow and red.

Coolwell covers these bottles in thick household enamel, over which she paints several bird motifs. These include a kookaburra, a rosella, and a wren or willy wagtail (the latter a bird that features widely in Australian Aboriginal cultural stories). Coolwell rescues these bottles from their domestic setting — and any negative associations or stereotypes they may carry — to consider them as rightful artistic objects.