Rush

Drayton








Still Life
London, 2025


Still Life explores the uncomfortable truth that we find beauty in death, provided it isn't our own.

The sculpture questions power dynamics around empathy, how we determine which bodies deserve compassion and which become mere objects. Inverting the traditional composition of 17th-19th century still life paintings, positioning the human figure in that same position of powerlessness: aestheticised, stripped of agency, arranged for our gaze.

The work doesn't rely on shock or violence. Instead, it dismantles human exceptionalism by reversing our expected role from observer to observed. When we become the subjects rather than the viewers, the comfortable hierarchy we've constructed begins to unravel. 

2025 Finalist - ArtEvol 2025, Saatchi Gallery

Resin, Wood, Fabric, LED, Non-Reflective Glass, Hanging Shadow Box
59 × 48 × 20 cm
2025

Reference work: Pieter Snyers, A Dead Hare, c. 1750

Photographer: Cieran Jay Forster