'Anatsui has developed over twenty principal formats for cutting, folding, and attaching the three main elements of an aluminum liquor-bottle top. Most of these formats, as they are called in his studio, offer two or more options, depending on whether the colored or the metallic side faces out. Two additional materials pervade his work: narrow strips of colored aluminum made for roofing, which provides jolts of pure color — intense blue, red, yellow, black, and more recently a weird pale green; and used aluminum printers’ plates, cut and stitched together. For more than a decade, Anatsui has been freely altering and combining the formats to create new, often unique effects for specific pieces…..The hinge of copper wire is the ubiquitous, critical ingredient: it alone allows flat elements to flex and become a sculpture.'
— “Bottle-top palette”, in El Anatsui: Art and Life, ed. Susan M Vogel (Prestel Publishing, 2020), pg.74
