Kate MccGwire’s singular and iconic sculptures are made out of feathers. She originally started to collect them from a shed colonised by pigeons situated next to her studio. A medium heavily loaded with symbolism, the feathers are at once physiologically entwined with the birds for warmth and flight, but when they are detached they become something other and “alien”.

MccGwire’s practice probes the beauty inherent in duality, exploring the interplay of opposites - at an aesthetic, intellectual and visceral level - that characterises the way we conceive the world. She does this by appealing to our core essence as human beings, to our senses and reason, and by drawing on materials capable of embodying different ways of seeing, feeling and thinking. The finished work has a consistent 'otherness' to it that places it beyond our immediate experience and so redefines the parameters of everyday reality.

 

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