During a three-week visit to New York in April 1966, Barker became acutely aware of American consumer culture embodied in the Coca-Cola bottle.
He cast his first Coke bottle immediately upon his return to London in May 1966. In 1968 Barker returned to the Coke bottle as a subject for two years, when he subjected it to numerous permutations: bottles in pairs or groups of three, with or without straws, upright and on their side, with caps on, off or in the process of being removed. The series of Coke bottles became icons of the 1960s and define Barker's ambition to challenge the limits of chrome-plating. By casting the found object, Barker turns the ephemeral into the eternal and as such positions himself as an heir to Marcel Duchamp and a forerunner of Jeff Koons.