Rachel Howard confronts drone warfare in Harvest paintings

Rachel Howard explores drone warfare and vulnerable human figures in Harvest, an exhibition of new paintings at 447 Space in New York. The presentation marks her first exhibition in the city since 2019.

Opening on 25 September 2026, the show explores how images shape the relationship between people who observe violence and those exposed to it. Howard moves between the distant view of a surveillance apparatus and the close presence of painted bodies.

The works set the visual language of contemporary warfare alongside references to Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents. Across these contrasting subjects, the act of looking becomes a question of power, distance and responsibility.

Machine vision translated into paint

In the drone paintings, aircraft appear as faint silhouettes against pale grounds. Reaper (Drone 3) isolates a single form, while Tap, Tap, Tap (Drone 123) distributes several across the surface. Their restrained appearance contrasts with the military technology they depict.

Elsewhere, the dense marks of Swarm and Airdrop create fields that seem to shift between recognisable imagery and abstraction. Fine dark traces interrupt the light ground, inviting a closer look at surfaces that initially appear remote.

Painting gives these images a physical presence beyond the screen. The press material describes a meeting between machine-generated vision and the handmade image, bringing the detached logic of surveillance into contact with a medium shaped by touch and time.

Rachel Howard’s Harvest brings the body into view

The Mud Baby paintings introduce a different register. Small infant figures emerge from dark, heavily worked grounds, their pale forms caught among brown, green and yellow strokes. The paint surrounding them feels unsettled, with gestures that both reveal and obscure the bodies.

These works refer to Rubens’s depiction of violence against defenceless children. Howard’s treatment carries that historical subject into a contemporary discussion of who is visible, who remains vulnerable and who controls the means of observation.

Rather than reconstructing the earlier composition, the paintings isolate figures within rough, compressed fields. The shift in scale and viewpoint directs attention away from an elevated overview and towards individual bodies.

Two ways of witnessing

Together, the groups connect different visual distances. Aerial imagery suggests observation from far above, while the infant figures ask viewers to confront bodily vulnerability at close range. The exhibition places these modes of looking in tension without resolving the discomfort between them.

The supplied studio views show small figurative paintings installed alongside larger, pale works, with generous stretches of white wall separating them. These photographs document the artist’s studio in 2026, rather than the installation at 447 Space.

Howard studied Fine Art and Critical Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. Surveillance and violence sit among the recurring concerns of her practice, alongside religion, repetition and the tension between control and disorder. Her work adds to the wider field of contemporary art covered by Designarcus.

Harvest takes place at 447 Space, a Chelsea exhibition venue established by artists Sean Scully and Liliane Tomasko. It runs from 25 September to 6 November 2026, with visits by appointment.

Event Information

Exhibition: Harvest
Artist: Rachel Howard / @rachelhowardart
Venue: 447 Space
Location: 447 West 17th Street, New York, United States
Dates: 25 September–6 November 2026
Venue founders: Sean Scully and Liliane Tomasko
Artwork photography: Steve Studios, as credited in the supplied image metadata