Opening on Saturday, April 26, 2025 from 3 pm to 8 pm
Exhibition from April 26 to June 21, 2025
Kate MccGwire continues her exploration of the complexities and grotesque
underbelly of beauty, where every attraction has its violent or dark opposite.
Drawing you in with intricate patterning and seductive aesthetics of glistening
feathers, much like a bird attracting a mate, MccGwire’s forms are both sinister
and compelling, evoking a mixture of sexual attraction and fearful desire.
For twenty years it has been the ambivalent and discarded feathers, collected and sorted en masse, that have become the unlikely and ephemeral ‘raw’ material on which British artist/sculptor Kate MccGwire has worked her Ovidian transformations.
It was as a child, in the mysterious winding waterways and natural history of the Norfolk Broads, that Kate MccGwire’s fascination with birds, wildlife and water began. A fascination that would become an enduring influence on her later practice.
MccGwire’s work has almost no sculptural antecedents — her biomorphic forms are constructed in a complex craft-based ritual. Working on her barge, she creates solid sculptural forms, painstakingly covered with selected feathers, attached one by one in a repetitive process, to almost mimic the close-packed arrangement of feathers on a wing or the scales of a fish or snake. Hairs, scales and feathers are related—all
evolved from similar structures, for example bird’s feathers arose from dinosaur scales. MccGwire is aware of these evolutionary origins when she says, “I like the way birds link us with our ancient ancestors.”
Something mysterious happens in the series of transformations she works, from feathers on a bird, to feathers sorted in boxes, to feathers in the final works. Our feelings are caught by the seductive allure of the surface magic, yet there are also uncomfortable feelings that such un-natural objects engender, disquieting, half-mythical, half-sexual undercurrents.
Underlying forms oscillate between figurative allusion and a more fluid resonance. There is a sense of musculature beneath the concealing feathered carapace amplifying that key element of ambiguity that is reflected in multiple strands of her work. Notable among these are the confined, constrained constructions, usually within cabinets or domes, that project a rampant sensuality and naked eroticism.
Visceral, oily, sinister and compelling coils elicit in us a mix of sexual attraction and fearful desire. The sheen, the iridescence, the subtle colour shifts, all contribute to the way we see these shifting, unruly forms that yet, on occasion, can still appear calm and still. She says, “I’m exploring that fine line, not wanting to disgust or shock, but rather subtly to unsettle the viewer in some way.”
Integral to the confined works, their enclosures do two things. First, they prevent us from touching, from engaging — feathers and fingers forever forbidden. MccGwire explains, “It’s about mystery. They’re often behind glass so that no one can ever touch them and find out what they’re like. They ought not to be touched. That’s part of the work for me.” And second, the vitrines are disturbingly small — the work within is tight and breathless, unambiguously dead.
Arranged in waves and torrents, some works remind us of the hidden power of the sea, its whirlpools and maelstroms. MccGwire alludes to this, “They’ll see the beauty and rhythmic energy of the feathers’ patterning, almost like the surface of the sea, but also be aware of a sense of turbulence beneath”.
—— Keith Roberts
