About the work

The plastic beach pails on the shelf behind them were part of a promotion, a temporary fixture in a place built for entirely different kinds of materials. For three weeks, if you bought a certain brand of instant coffee, you got a brightly coloured pail and shovel free. The men in the office had little use for them, their children long grown or otherwise uninterested in sandcastles. But one morning, a supervisor, new to the site, picked up a yellow pail, filled it with spare pens and loose change, and placed it on his desk. The others, seeing this small act of domesticity, left their own pails untouched, knowing they’d soon be gone, just another oddity the office absorbed and then forgot.