Arts & Culture  News

Still life artwork decorates New Covent Garden Market facade

Eyal Granit’s Still Life Citrus commission_landscape

Published on
October 18, 2019

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Eagle-eyed passersby will spot a new artwork on the New Covent Garden Market building façade on Nine Elms Lane.

Artist Eyal Granit was chosen to create a new work titled ‘Still Life Citrus’ (2019) as the newly commissioned artwork. It will be unveiled on 24 October 2019 and on display until October 2020.

Winner: Eyal Granit’s Still Life Citrus artwork

New Covent Garden Market Vitrine Art Commission is a new three-year long public art initiative, funded by VINCI St. Modwen (VSM) in association with Covent Garden Market Authority and realised in collaboration with London’s largest contemporary art festival Art Night.

The initiative aims to promote the work of artists of all career stages working within photography, painting, text or other two-dimensional medium. Artists are invited to apply with proposals of artworks inspired by fruit, vegetables and flowers, the key products of New Covent Garden Market – the UK’s largest and oldest fresh wholesale produce market – and consider the market’s physical context and communities.

Until this month, the previous artwork was Anna Skladmann’s site-specific installation called Ghost In The Machine which was part of Art Night 2018 in Nine Elms.

About ‘Still Life Citrus’

In his winning proposal Eval Granit creates an image that reflects on the immortal nature of fruit. Reminiscent of the works of 16th and 17th-century painters and produced using the focus stacking technique, this hyper-realistic fantasy photograph glorifies the common objects of daily life. Inspired by ‘Bodegones’ by the Spanish master Juan Sánchez Cotán, which Granit came across while studying photography in Madrid, the image features an abundance of citrus fruits displayed on a large table in and around crystal glasses and vases, antique jars and trays, or hung from above, and complemented with arrangements of orchids and daffodils. Combining multiple images taken at different focus distances gives the resulting image a greater depth of field, creating this panoramic tableau outside the constraints of a single frame.

The regeneration of New Covent Garden Market

The joint venture of VINCI St. Modwen in partnership with the Covent Garden Market Authority is delivering the redevelopment of new Covent Garden Market, a landmark multiphased project and the largest scheme in the Nine Elms regeneration area on the south bank of the River Thames.

New Covent Garden Market, London’s original – and the UK’s largest – fresh produce market, lies at the heart of Nine Elms. The market operated on three sites totalling 57 acres, and these are being consolidated onto a single, state-of-the-art 37 acre site releasing 20 acres of land for development.

These 20 acres will be transformed into new high quality residential-led mixed-use schemes, benefiting from riverside views and comprising approximately 3,000 new homes including 600 affordable homes, 135,000 sq ft of commercial accommodation and 100,000 sq ft of retail, leisure and new community facilities, including shops, cafés and restaurants. It will provide around 2,000 new jobs for this area of London’s Nine Elms, in addition to the 2,500 retained jobs in the market.


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