What would you do?

Imagine, if you will, that you’re an artist. And you, the artist, have been given a blank canvas, upon which your creativity can be splashed with all manner of flair and forward-thinking panache. What do you do?

Do you freeze, like Jermaine Jenas in front of goal, and fluff your big moment? Or do you jump all over it, thump your artistic ball into the net and wheel away triumphantly to the corner flag as the crowd goes wild over your vision and general genius?

Cody Burridge is such an artist, one of Arena’s elite squad of photographers, and was given exactly that blank canvas recently by Monkey Shoulder, the maker of our preferred whisky. His brief was simple: use the bottle of Monkey Shoulder to create a piece of art. And off you go. So he did. Here’s what he came up with…

Apparently it works on numerous levels: you’ve got the echo of the moth in the girl’s dress; her hypnotic state induced by the whisky in all its amber glory, drawing obvious parallels to the flapping Lepidoptera being drawn to the flame; and the symbolism of the bottle as a light source, alluding to a light-bulb ‘eureka’ moment, which creates a subconscious association between Monkey Shoulder and innovation.

Clever innit?

And there was all sorts of fancy post-production action going on, too – because getting a moth that big would’ve cost absolutely loads…

Such jiggery-pokery prompted a line of debate in the office – namely, what would we come up with if we were given a carte blanche (and a bottle of booze). Both predictably and disappointingly, all that we managed between us was getting the work-experience girls to sample the stuff while we took their photos. Which is why none of us are artists, in any shape or form.

Can you lot do any better?

Two more Arena types are getting the same brief over the next few months. Come up with any (genuinely) decent ideas, and they might just take them on board…