A Perishable Commodity explores New Covent Garden Flower Market as a site where ecological, economic and logistical forms of time converge.

Flowers are among the most perishable commodities traded globally, and the rhythms of the market have historically been structured around the urgency of decay: trading begins before dawn, value diminishes by the hour, and systems of transport, refrigeration and packaging work to temporarily suspend the natural lifespan of the flower.

Drawing on the history of Dutch flower auctions and the “Klok” trading system — where prices descend over time — the project considers how perishability becomes embedded within economic systems and infrastructures. It reflects on how geography and seasonality are compressed, with flowers transported internationally within 24–48 hours,  carbon-intensive and highly extractive supply chains. 

To contrast with the urgency of this transactional space, we introduced slowness and duration into the market place by documenting the everyday working aspects of the site using pinhole photography. A method that is explicit in it’s need to take time, long exposures force a process of staying, waiting, and counting, as the mechanics of the camera and available light make an image appear.

Adapting both analogue and digital camera bodies, the process of making the photographs using this pinhole method limits human control over the image. In the context of the flower market, this creates space to reflect on the dominant relationship humans have with the natural world, particularly through our impulse to document, categorise, and administer it. The work attempts to counter this mode of relating by producing images that are inexact and blurred, marked by light leaks and with no depth of field. In making their image-making mechanisms visible, the photographs propose another way of looking.

Placed among an installation of decaying cut flowers purchased from the market—flowers that have travelled around the globe, from South America to the Netherlands—the photographs introduce an additional temporal dimension to the complex and paradoxical timescales of the flower market. This is a site where weeks, months, and even years of labour and growth culminate in a tiny window during which flowers can be harvested, transported, and sold. The flower market becomes a microcosm of the conflicting rhythms of mass consumerism.

Presented in dutch buckets, the visual language of the market, the flowers were allowed to decay over the course of the exhibition. Brought into the context of art and exhibition-making, A Perishable Commodity also speaks to the consumerist relationship with time in the art market—from its fetishisation of newness, emergence, and currency, to its investment in legacy and permanence.

A Perishable Commodity was commissioned and curated by students from RCA MA Curating Contemporary Art, and was part of  RCA2026: School of Arts & Humanities Show.

Installation comprises Giclée prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308gsm paper, cut flowers purchased from New Covent Garden Flower Market, packaging, Dutch buckets, water, metal & chipboard shelving units, LED lighting.

Thank you to K2 Screen.