'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.

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

Rush Drayton is a sculptor and design engineer whose practice explores the shifting boundaries between humans and the natural world. As a child, he would disguise himself in shaggy wool coats to slip into flocks of sheep, an early gesture of immersion that informs his ongoing interest in perspectives beyond the human.

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Working at the intersection of art and science, Drayton examines ecological systems and the sensory worlds of animals to reimagine how we design and live within shared environments. His sculptures disrupt anthropocentric hierarchies, reimagining coexistence by recognising non-human life as active participants rather than passive subjects.

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Based between London and Sydney, Drayton is completing the dual Master’s programme in Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London. In 2025, he worked in the Berlin studio of Julius von Bismarck, contributing to a major Kunst am Bau commission for Frankfurt Airport.