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Kate MccGwire (born 1964) is a British sculptor who specializes in the medium of feathers. Her work experiments with the binary notions of beauty and disgust, malice, tranquility, and the familiar yet otherworldly. Her use of pigeon feathers takes a waste product of the ‘rats with wings’ and elevates them to the status of art. By re-framing the object and placing it out of context, the artwork generates a kind of ‘field of attraction’ around it, and the viewer is left both seduced and alienated, relishing the spectacle, intrigued but at the same time aware of something disquieting, something ‘other’.
Much of MccGwire's practice references Freud's 'Unheimlich' (the uncanny, or, literally, the 'unhomely'), the idea of a place where the familiar can somehow excite fear. It also embraces artistic notions of the abject. In so doing the artist creates a shift from a world in which objects sit in their conventional place and allows a new perspective, exposing the viewer, in the most visceral way possible, to the truths that lurk behind the familiar and to the reality of what it is to be human – a brutal but also unrelentingly beautiful consciousness of the ugly and the funereal, fear and disgust.
MccGwire's exhibition history includes solo shows at All Visual Arts (2012) and Pertwee, Anderson and Gold (2011), as well as numerous groups shows such as at Glass tress (2015) at the
{{DEFAULTSORT:MccGwire, Kate 1964 births 21st-century British sculptors Abstract sculptors Alumni of the Royal College of Art Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University English sculptors English women sculptors Artists from Norwich Living people 21st-century British women artists 20th-century English women 20th-century English people 21st-century English women 21st-century English people
Kate MccGwire (born 1964) is a British sculptor who specializes in the medium of feathers. Her work experiments with the binary notions of beauty and disgust, malice, tranquility, and the familiar yet otherworldly. Her use of pigeon feathers takes a waste product of the ‘rats with wings’ and elevates them to the status of art. By re-framing the object and placing it out of context, the artwork generates a kind of ‘field of attraction’ around it, and the viewer is left both seduced and alienated, relishing the spectacle, intrigued but at the same time aware of something disquieting, something ‘other’.
Much of MccGwire's practice references Freud's 'Unheimlich' (the uncanny, or, literally, the 'unhomely'), the idea of a place where the familiar can somehow excite fear. It also embraces artistic notions of the abject. In so doing the artist creates a shift from a world in which objects sit in their conventional place and allows a new perspective, exposing the viewer, in the most visceral way possible, to the truths that lurk behind the familiar and to the reality of what it is to be human – a brutal but also unrelentingly beautiful consciousness of the ugly and the funereal, fear and disgust.
MccGwire's exhibition history includes solo shows at All Visual Arts (2012) and Pertwee, Anderson and Gold (2011), as well as numerous groups shows such as at Glass tress (2015) at the Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
alongside artists such as Polly Morgan and Jake and Dinos Chapman
Iakovos "Jake" Chapman (born 1966) and Konstantinos "Dinos" Chapman (born 1962) are British visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers. Their subject matter tries to be deliberately shocking, including, in 2008, a series of works that ...
. MccGwire's work is also collected by several notable figures in the art world including Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi (; ar, تشارلز ساعتجي; born 9 June 1943) is an Iraqi-British businessman and the co-founder, with his brother Maurice, of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. The brothers led the business – the world's largest a ...
.
MccGwire was born in Norwich
Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...
, Norfolk
Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...
. She was educated at Manchester Polytechnic
Manchester Metropolitan University is located in the centre of Manchester, England. The university has over 40,000 students and over 4,000 members of staff. It is home to four faculties (Arts and Humanities, Business and Law, Health and Educat ...
, Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College
Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College (SIAD) was an art college in the United Kingdom from 1994 to 2005. It was formed from the merger of West Surrey College of Art and Design (1969–1995) and Epsom School of Art and Design (1893â ...
and the Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...
. MccGwire uses a Dutch barge moored on the Thames near Hampton Court
Hampton Court Palace is a Grade I listed royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, southwest and upstream of central London on the River Thames. The building of the palace began in 1514 for Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the chief ...
as her studio.
References
External links
*{{DEFAULTSORT:MccGwire, Kate 1964 births 21st-century British sculptors Abstract sculptors Alumni of the Royal College of Art Alumni of Manchester Metropolitan University English sculptors English women sculptors Artists from Norwich Living people 21st-century British women artists 20th-century English women 20th-century English people 21st-century English women 21st-century English people