Still Life Australiana by Marian Drew, created in Australia between 2003 and 2009, stages dead native animals within domestic still life settings to expose the often-overlooked consequences of human encroachment on the environment. Roadkill, pet attacks, and infrastructure-related fatalities were routine realities of the Australian landscape. By embedding these casualties within the aesthetic vocabulary of 17th-century European still life, Drew called attention to the fragility and invisibility of nonhuman lives in an expanding human world.
Each photograph stages an animal—a rosella, wombat, or crow—on richly set tables adorned with starched linen, global artifacts, and decorative crockery. The resulting compositions are visually alluring but unsettling, prompting viewers to reconcile the tension between beauty and death, domestic order and environmental violence. Drew's practice leverages this discomfort to reframe perceptions of species loss as not just ecological but cultural.
Visually, the images are distinguished by their painterly appearance. Shot in color, they feature deep tones and tactile textures. Drew uses a 6-by-7 medium format film camera and employs a technique known as "painting with light": working in darkness, she illuminates the scene with a handheld torch during long exposures. This method creates a soft luminosity that renders the animal subjects with reverent clarity and evokes the chiaroscuro of Dutch still life.
Presented at venues from Photoquai, Paris (2011) and Head On at Hazelhurst (2013) to Linden Centre’s Conceits (2014–15), the series drew sustained attention to its uneasy beauty and environmental provocation. Works entering public collections—including the National Gallery of Australia, QAGOMA, and the J. Paul Getty Museum—reinforced its ongoing resonance.
