rushdrayton
ArtEvol 2025 / Rush Drayton
Still Life , 2025 Resin, wood, fabric, LED, non-reflective glass, hanging shadow box 48 × 59 × 20 cm
Rush Drayton is a sculptor and design engineer whose transdisciplinary practice focuses on ecological inquiry, seeking to dissolve the boundaries between humans and the natural world. Early explorations included immersive encounters with sheep herds, reflecting an interest in collective behaviour and nonhuman perspectives. Drayton’s work engages with umwelt, the sensory worlds of animals, and ecological systems, aiming to design with and for co-inhabitants. Central to the practice is an exploration of interconnectedness, fostering resilient futures while challenging anthropocentrism. Drayton considers art and design to be entering a paradigm shift that moves beyond biomimicry, embracing non-human life as collaborators in shaping environments and technologies that support all species. Based between London and Sydney, Drayton is completing dual Master’s degrees in Art at the Royal College of Art and in Science at Imperial College London. Professional experience includes working with Berlin-based artist Julius von Bismarck on large-scale public commissions, including a forthcoming Kunst am Bau sculpture for Frankfurt Airport.
Artwork Introduction Still Life explores the uncomfortable truth that beauty is often found in death, provided it is not one’s own. The sculpture questions power dynamics around empathy, examining how certain bodies are deemed deserving of compassion while others become objects. Inverting the traditional composition of seventeenth- to nineteenth-century still-life paintings, Rush Drayton positions the human figure in the same posture of powerlessness, aestheticised, stripped of agency and arranged for the viewer’s gaze. The work quietly dismantles human exceptionalism by reversing the expected roles, shifting from observer to observed. When humans become the subjects rather than the viewers, the comfortable hierarchy begins to unravel.
Reference: Pieter Snyers, A Dead Hare , c. 1750.
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