Menagerie: An Experience

Four weeks ago today, my team and I were walking out of Harewood House, having just finished installing my latest exhibition, Menagerie. We knew then that the exhibition was unlikely to open as planned, but we had no idea quite what we’d be walking into.

We’d spent the last five days in an 18th century architectural bubble, the ideal place to unintentionally self-isolate. The house was shut to the public and operating a skeleton staff - as is usual for the early months of the year - so we were arguably in the safest place in Yorkshire. The install experience was unique and surreal, not just because of the stunning location, but because COVID-19 was unfolding outside the grounds and across the world as we worked.

We tuned into BBC News and listened to the updates echo around the vast rooms, wondering what would be on the other side when we finished. It felt like the beginning of a film: the air was ominous and full of tension, but the plot was yet to unfold. Day by day things seemed to escalate; we spoke to loved ones on the phone and tried to stock our cupboards remotely, but the gravitas of the situation and our surroundings made it seem dreamlike.

The exhibition had been years in the making; there was months of planning, of collecting materials and fabrication - all supported by a team of Harewood House volunteers who had meticulously prepared thousands of feathers. I’d borrowed works from collectors, experimented with new techniques and created new work in the studio. It was a great communal effort, and then…

On 17th March we finished placing my new installation, Cavort, it’s a vast site-specific pheasant feather piece that now lays dormant in the Yellow Drawing Room. I walked around the empty house, passing Anima and Stifle in the Dining Room, Viscera, Turmoil and Quandary in the Gallery and my earlier installation, Discharge, specially adapted for the Main Library. Behind me, security guards closed the shutters, switched on alarms and prepared for a full lockdown.

I was left wondering if it had actually happened, or if the whole thing was an illusion. My work, so often described as uncanny, was the most normal part of this experience. For me, it was the familiar that was made strange.

- Kate MccGwire

---

MENAGERIE: KATE MccGWIRE
Harewood House, Yorkshire | UK
Opening dates TBC

COMPETITION: SUFFOLK SHORTS

I’m delighted to have been asked to be on the Jury for Best Art & Performance Film for Suffolk Shorts, a new platform and competition for short filmmaking launching in January 2020.

‘We believe that short films are the future, they give filmmakers the chance to experiment and hone their skills. Telling a story in a short film takes skill and determination, but it also frees you from the constraints and influences often associated with features or traditional commissioning. Shorts are not just practice runs, they are an art form in their own right.’ - Suffolk Shorts

Suffolk Shorts features both regional and international talent, with an awards event on the evening of Friday 9th October and screening up to 40 short films on 10th and 11th of October in Suffolk’s waterfront town of Ipswich. Submissions opened through FilmFreeway on Monday 20th January for the five main award categories for 2020: Animation, Documentary, Drama, East Anglian Stories and Art & Performance Film. All the award winning films will receive a cash prize of £1000 and there is an additional prize of £500 for Best Student Film in any category. Submissions open now.

---

Submissions open now.
Click here for more information.

I AM LOST: CHARITY PRIZE DRAW

Each year I create an artist edition in order to raise money for a charity close to my heart, this year it's St Mungo's, a charity which I have a particular admiration for. Last year we raised over £2,000 for my chosen charity via JustGiving, so I'm hoping to reach a similar target this time around!

This year your donations via JustGiving will receive two rewards, firstly with every donation of £25, you'll be sent an un-framed edition of 'I Am Lost' (pigeon), 2019, signed 'Kate MccGwire'. But also each donation will enter you into a prize draw to win a framed version of the artwork (as pictured in the main image).

If you'd like to enter the prize draw but not donate the full £25, you can make any donation of over £5 and be entered into the prize draw (you just won't receive a feather unless you win!). Please make sure to include your full name when you donate so that you can be entered into the raffle (anonymous donors are difficult to draw out of a hat).

If you would like to donate more than the cost of the feather, or if you would like multiple feathers, please include details in a note at the point of donation (there is a maximum of 2 feathers per person, due to limited availability).

Once you have made your donation please email kate@katemccgwire.com with your postal address and your feather will wing it's way over to you! All postage costs are covered by me, so 100% of your donation will go to charity.

The prize draw will take place on Monday 16th December and the winner notified. After that, all feather editions will be posted. (You can donate after the 16th however the rewards will no longer be available.)

---

---

EXHIBITION: THE WIND AND THE BIRDS ENCOURAGE ME

"In the song of the lark
In the morning with my faithful wheelbarrow"

One day in April 1879, returning from his daily tour of rural France, mailman Ferdinand Cheval stumbled on a stone so bizarre that it reminded him of a dream that was gradually being forgotten, like a memory just beyond his imagination. He spent 33 years of his life modelling, night after night, that monument of reverie…

Independent of all artistic trends and not subject to any architectural technique, the Palais Ideal du Facteur Cheval is the illustration of naive architecture and art brut. Defended by André Malraux, the Palace was listed as a historic monument in 1969. Ferdinand Cheval has been the source of inspiration and homage to many artists from the surrealist movement including André Breton, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst and Niki de Saint Phalle.

From 14 September 2019 to 5 January 2020 this unique location will host THE WIND AND THE BIRDS ENCOURAGE ME an exhibition that pays tribute to Ferdinand Cheval, whose dedication and meticulous observation of nature gave him the ability to transport us into other worlds. Today, the works of Kate MccGwire, Rebecca Horn, Ali Cherri and Jean-Luc Mylayne offer a new poetic vision of his dream that has crossed all cultures and ages: ‘to rise, to be light, to be carried by the winds’.

TRANCE, 2018, Kate MccGwire

---

THE WIND AND THE BIRDS ENCOURAGE ME
Rebecca Horn, Kate MccGwire, Ali Cherri & Jean-Luc Mylayne
Palais Ideal du Facteur Cheval | Hauterives, France
14 September 2019 - 5 January 2020

Click here for more information.

EXHIBITION: WONDROUS WORLDS

WONDROUS WORLDS | PRESS RELEASE

1 March - 20 April 2019
PV: Friday 1 March 2019 (7 - 9 pm) 

"The absurd, presented with taste, arouses aversion and admiration." 

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is the break with the supposedly beautiful that unites the Old Masters shown in this exhibition through to contemporary artists in their work. Her works evoke contrary associations, thoughts and feelings - one can hardly escape them and involuntarily becomes emotionally involved.

It seems as if every viewer has a different opinion about what he seeks to grasp when he sees the pictures, objects and sculptures. This art polarizes. Lifelike meets absurd and fantastic, beauty unites with cruelty, reality becomes an illusion, the fairytale charms and chases us a shiver on the back.

The motifs seem familiar and alien at the same time. It is a charming and yet a broken beauty, which threatens to tilt at any time into the morbid and nightmarish, without the evil would be tangible. While one may feel a slight discomfort, one has long since surrendered to the seduction of something never seen before.

Artists: Nicole Bianchet, GL Brierley, Martin Denker, Max Ernst, Jean Tinguely and Eva Aeppli, Marianna Gartner, Kerstin Grimm, Uwe Henneken, Paul Klee, Gustav Kluge, Dirk Lange, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz, René Magritte, Charles Matton, Kate MccGwire, David Nicholson, Daniel Richter, Josef Scharl, Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern, Carolein Smit, Dimitris Tzamouranis, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Thomas Virnich, Wols, Aloys Zötl and others

---

WONDROUS WORLDS
Galerie Michael Haas | Berlin
1 March - 20 April 2019

Click here for more information.

PERIHELION (2014) Kate MccGwire

SISSURE OMMATEUM (2016) Kate MccGwire

EXHIBITION: DICHOTOMY

PRESS RELEASE

DICHOTOMY | Kate MccGwire

The Harley Gallery | Welbeck, Nottinghamshire
20 October 2018 - 2 January 2019

“I want to seduce by what I do—but revolt in equal measure.”

---

Internationally renowned sculptor Kate MccGwire uses natural materials to explore the play of opposites: beauty and disquiet, tranquillity and malice. Her works are at once both familiar otherworldly, employing natural materials in a way that is recognisable and yet strange.

Dichotomy is her first retrospective exhibition, including a host of new works alongside those dating back to her degree show. Her graduation work was bought by the collector Charles Saatchi in 2004, and he has been an ongoing supporter ever since, most recently exhibiting MccGwire’s work Corvid as part of the group show Iconoclasts.

“This retrospective visits the recurring themes that have been prevalent in my work and imagination since childhood. Of the beauty and brutality of nature, of the motion of decay and the turmoil of life: evocative of eel catchers of on the Norfolk Broads, the turbulence of water, the flight of a bird and the squirm of maggots. It is a memento mori, a sculptural vanitas, a celebration of life and death, decay and energy.”

MccGwire was born and raised on the Norfolk Broads, her father was a boat builder so she developed a connection with water and nature from an early age - in particular a fascination with birds, which has informed her work ever since. After completing her M.A. in sculpture at London’s Royal College of Art in 2004, she bought a barge as a studio on a dilapidated island on the Thames in South London. It was here she discovered a colony of pigeons in a nearby warehouse, which prompted her to start collecting their feathers, fascinated by the duality of their cultural associations.

“The dove is the symbol of peace, purity, and fertility, but it’s exactly the same species as a pigeon—which everyone regards as being dirty, foul, a pest. I find it intriguing how the same bird can have such contradictory symbolism, and how our behavior can differ so intensely based on the colour of the bird’s feathers…”

MccGwire now receives feathers from farmers, gamekeepers, and pigeon racers. She has also worked with a variety of other mediums—many of them found, everyday materials, including wishbones and hair.

“These materials carry with them a weight of meaning and cultural resonance, they draw us in with their iridescent beauty, they are seductive and yet we are repelled by them at the same time. Combined with the bodily forms, they seem alien - the creases and crevices are recognisable, the materials familiar, and yet when seen out of place they are uncanny.”

---

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

---

DICHOTOMY: Kate MccGwire
The Harley Gallery | Welbeck, Nottinghamshire
20 October 2018 - 2 January 2019

Click here for more information.

EXHIBITION: SASSE/SLUICE

PRESS RELEASE 

SASSE/SLUICE: Kate MccGwire
Part of the Aldeburgh Festival 2018

For the past 10 years sculptor and installation artist Kate MccGwire has worked primarily with feathers and other natural materials. Sasse/Sluice alone consists of some 10,000 pigeon feathers and is a special commission by Snape Maltings for the Dovecote Studio. The work’s title immediately suggests the dangers inherent in this beautiful but threatened landscape as well as man’s attempts to hold back nature: a sasse is an archaic term for a lock, while sluices are used throughout Suffolk for the control of water levels, protecting marshes and fields, buildings and livelihoods from flooding.

The feathers here are moulted pigeon (shed from living birds), a reminder of the birds that once inhabited the Dovecote. The direction of ‘flow’ in the material is exactly the same as it would be if water were to suddenly surge from the nearby sea. MccGwire is playing here with a world of opposites, juxtaposing the idea of a man-made lock or sluice with the natural surroundings of the reed beds; the control of industrial interventions with the potential chaos of tidal surges; and an inanimate carpet of feathers with the ceaseless eddy and swell of the sea.

Part of the inspiration for Sasse/Sluice was appropriately Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes:

‘The unpredictability of the sea appears woven into the music’s texture. You can almost hear the sun glinting, bouncing off the surface of the water, barely disguising the treacherous waters beneath. I’d like to think people will look at my work in the same way. 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 – making us think perhaps of the destructive force of the waters threatening Snape itself.’ 

Emma Lilley © 2018

---

SASSE/SLUICE: Kate MccGwire
Part of the Aldeburgh Festival 2018
Dovecote Studio | Snape Maltings, Suffolk, IP17 1SP
8 June - 18 July 2018

Click here for more information.

EXHIBITION: M2@15

---

PRESS RELEASE
m2@15 | A.P.T. Art in Perpetuity Trust

---

m2@15 is a retrospective exhibition celebrating 15 years of a unique gallery space. In 2003 Julia Manheim and Ken Taylor incorporated a 1m2 window gallery into their newly converted milk depot in Peckham. Since then around ninety artists have shown work in the m2 Gallery, which presents a 24 hour accessible, rolling programme of six exhibitions a year.

To acknowledge this endeavour and the continuing success of the gallery, 32 previously exhibited artists have been selected to present a multi faceted exhibition. Many of the artists have responded to this invitation by making new work, others will show recent pieces for the first time in the UK. This group of British and international artists has a vast range of skills, expertise and international exhibiting experience; all make the ordinary appear extraordinary. Work will include photography, installation, ceramics, video, sculpture, painting, glass, jewellery and performance. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated colour publication. 

---

Exhibiting artists:

Peter Abrahams | Teresa Albor | Caroline Broadhead | Rod Bugg | Alison Carlier | Helen Carnac & David Gates | Lin Cheung | Anthony Coleman | Robert Cooper | Fran Cottell | Barbara Dougan | Helen Dowling | Gen Doy | Iain Hales | Stella Harding | Anna Heinrich & Leon Palmer | Harriet Hill | Benjamin Jenner | Alistair Magee | Mutalib Man | Carol Mancke | Julia Manheim | Stuart Mayes | Kate MccGwire | Helen Pailing | Flora Parrott | Irene Pérez Hernandez | Jacqueline Poncelet | Ken Taylor | Frank Watson | Matthew Webber | Ken Wilder

---

M2 @ 15
APT Gallery | 6 Creekside, Deptford, SE8 4SA
10 - 27 May 2018

Click here for more information.

EXHIBITION: MYTH, MATERIAL AND METAMORPHOSIS

---

MATERIAL EARTH: MYTH, MATERIAL AND METAMORPHOSIS
Saturday 10 February – Monday 2 April 2018

“Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing”.
 — Aesop’s Fables

'The wild Northern territories of Europe have fascinated artists, writers and philosophers for centuries. The revival of interest in these tumultuous, challenging landscapes occurred during the 19th century, with the great Romantics such as William Morris, William Blake and Lord Byron. Showcasing a range of artists who work with the mythology and stories of metamorphoses from Northern. Europe, this exhibition will be an ode to all those that are magical, fantastical and ever-changing. Material Earth II will draw on the animals and moral compasses of ancient Greek and Roman fables, the Scandinavian and Germanic fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson as well as the archaic Paganism of European cultures, inextricably bound to Messums’ location so proximal to sites such as Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral.'

Exhibiting artists include; Malene Hartmann Rasmussen, Christie Brown, Barnaby Barford, Bertozzi and Casoni, Katie Spragg, Claire Curneen, Kate Malone, Lena Peters, Sam Bakewell, Grayson Perry, Polly Morgan, Alastair Mackie, Bouke de Vries, Kate MccGwire, Ann Carrington, Charlotte Cory and Wolfe von Lenkiewicz.

---

MATERIAL EARTH: MYTH, MATERIAL AND METAMORPHOSIS
Messums Wiltshire | Place Farm, Wiltshire, SP3 6LW
10 February – 2 April 2018

Click here for more information.

Sissure (Ommateum), 2016, Kate MccGwire

'Hope is the thing with feathers' - Emily Dickinson

Each year I choose to create an artist edition in order to raise money for a charity, this year it's Shelter, a charity which I have a particular admiration for. 

There are two types of works available:

'I am lost' Dove, 2017 - £25 [NOW SOLD OUT]
'I am lost' Pigeon, 2017 - £20 [NOW SOLD OUT]

Both are signed 'Kate MccGwire' and sent by first-class post, following a donation of the above amounts to my Just Giving page. If you would like to donate more than the cost of the feather, or if you would like multiple feathers, please include details in a note at point of donation (there is a maximum of 2 feathers per person, due to limited availability).

Once you have made your donation please email kate@katemccgwire.com with your postal address and your feather will wing it's way over to you!

Merry Christmas!

Kate x

BOOK: LES MAGICIENNES DE LA TERRE

Delighted to be included in this beautiful French publication, more details below...

---

LES MAGICIENNES DE LA TERRE: L'art et la nature au féminin
Virginie LUC | 2017 | Éditions ULMER  

Virginie Luc nous présente un panorama des artistes contemporaines les plus remarquables, qui façonnent des oeuvres insolites dans et par la Nature. Ces oeuvres sont aussi graciles que subtilement menaçantes. Quelque chose couve mais quoi? Le désir de renouer le lien en passe d'être rompu entre les hommes et la nature? La résurgence du viscéral et du primitif, d'une nature prête à reprendre le dessus? Le désir de retrouver un monde perdu ou que nous n'avons jamais possédé?

Rei Naïto, Cornelia Konrads, Helene Schmitz, Miya Ando, Ellie Davies, Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger, Fujiko Nakaya, Su-Mei Tse, Eva Jospin, Kate MccGwire, Claire Morgan, Min-Jeong Seo, Janet Laurence, Bridget Polk, Akiko Ikeuchi, Georgia Russell, Mathilde Roussel.

120 illustrations - 160 pages | ISBN: 9782841389353
35.00 € | Available here.

---

Arts Show with Jonathan Ross

---

Click on the image to hear the interview with Jonathan Ross for BBC Radio 2's Arts Show.
Only 18 days left to listen | Discussions start around 1:39:50.

EXHIBITION: Iconoclasts

PRESS RELEASE
ICONOCLASTS: ART OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM
27 September 2017 – 7 January 2018 (extended to 6 March 2018)

Corvid, 2011, Kate MccGwire - Photo: Tessa Angus

Saatchi Gallery presents ICONOCLASTS: ART OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM, a major new exhibition featuring the work of Maurizio Anzeri, Matthew Chambers, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Josh Faught, Aaron Fowler, Danny Fox, Makiko Kudo, Dale Lewis, Thomas Mailaender, Kate MccGwire, Renee So, Douglas White and Alexi Williams-Wynn.

Iconoclasts explores the experimental and often transformational practices of a small group of groundbreaking artists, inviting us to engage anew with what modern day iconoclasm might be. By using a myriad of unusual image-making practices - from branding imagery onto human skin to sculpting curving structures out of crow feathers - these artists are breaking the mould, ushering in a new age of artistic defiance through their resistance of typical artistic processes and their personal interpretations of cultural mores.

As an act, iconoclasm historically holds both religious and progressive connotations. However, 21st century culture has eroded the radicalism of this concept, and artists are now questioning the intrinsic nature of iconoclasm itself by scrutinizing what defines a work of art.

While this group cannot be described as iconoclasts in the traditional sense of the word, they are all driven by an iconoclastic urge, which manifests itself in the intriguingly diverse and often destructive ways they produce art. A startling number of materials and techniques cohabit in one exhibition, where abstraction, figuration, creation and deconstruction combine.

At a time when the very notion of iconoclasm has seemingly become mainstream, Iconoclasts brings together the work of thirteen distinct contemporary figures, seeking to examine what it means to be an iconoclast today.

---

ICONOCLASTS: ART OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM
Saatchi Gallery | Duke of York's HQ, King's Road, London, SW3 4RY, UK
27 September 2017 – 7 January 2018 (extended to 6 March 2018)
Entry to the exhibition is free.

Click here for more information

---

Thank you to everyone who came to the private view on the 26th September, the gallery had over 1,800 visitors during the course of the evening so it was a bit of a whirlwind on the night! Photo © Piers Allardyce, 2017.

EXHIBITION: Proof of Life

Proof of Life / Lebenszeichen

Works from a Private Collection

The construction of the Tower of Babel as a massacre. The artist as a dead revolutionary. A stained-glass window made from butterfly wings. Proof of Life brings together 100 paintings, sculptures and photographic works that investigate existential questions in a both palpable and profound manner. Their aesthetic impact inevitably draws the viewer into its spell. What these works bring to view is linked to a tradition of influential pictures, some of which go far back in time. The presented works simultaneously quote, seduce, irritate, provoke and thematize concepts of moral values. This includes a summons not only to situate in historical terms what is being seen, but also to relate it quite concretely to the present. The works come from a private collection that has never before been publicly presented in this form. Proof of Life presents a precise selection of in some cases space-encompassing but always impressive works by international artistic stars such as Louise Bourgeois, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Anton Corbijn, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Daniel Richter.

A central work of this exhibition is the “Death of Marat” restaged as a life-sized sculpture in the round. In an impressive manner, the British artist Gavin Turk combines the well-known picture by Jacques-Louis David from 1793 with his own self-portrait. Whereas David was concerned with presenting Marat as a martyr and exalting revolutionary virtues and ideals, with his self-portrait Turk connects the current significance of art with the failure of the ideals of the Enlightenment and of freedom.

Exhibition Poster, featuring Gavin Turk's Death of Marat, 1998.

Proof of Life raises the question as to whether and why such images anchored in our memory are still relevant today. The exhibition shows how striking pictorial models are updated in a surprising manner and transformed into new visual inventions. The artistic results are simultaneously fascinating and shocking; the aesthetic experiences they make possible are complex and revelatory. They become documents and symbols of our present era and thus vital signs of contemporary culture.

“The exhibition derives its strength from the impact of the pictures, which in no way excludes deeper insights but instead fosters them. The works don’t immobilize us in wordless veneration but cause astonishment, questioning and doubt which we relate directly to the present. Fundamental questions raised by this exhibition are how art possesses this capability and why certain age-old motifs don’t become petrified manifestations in a museum but instead remain extremely lively.” Peter Friese, Director of the Weserburg

Several works on display further investigate these issues in a sometimes nightmarish manner. Jake and Dinos Chapman use the Biblical account of the building of the Tower of Babel as a parable for the disintegration of all shared cultural values. In the form of a model with countless, frighteningly violent figures, they present the Biblical construction project as a massacre. For his part, Damien Hirst contributes a monumental church window to the exhibition. But instead of lead-framed, colored glass, he made use of thousands of brightly shining, fluorescent butterfly wings. How is pain transformed into beauty, evanescence into permanence? How is matter ushered into the realm of spirit, how does the lowly butterfly become a symbol of the soul? John Isaacs presents a 1:1 adaptation and reformulation of the famous Pietà by Michelangelo made of Carrara marble. But the world-famous motif, the Madonna with the dead body of Jesus on her lap, is covered by a thin silk cloth and withdrawn from our view.

Fume, 2007, Kate MccGwire.

“The artists featured in this exhibition continue the exploration of art- and cultural-historical contexts in an intelligent, previously unseen manner. They neither imitate nor romanticize models. They bring new life to familiar perspectives regardless of whether these come from figural or abstract art.” Peter Friese, Director of the Weserburg

---

Artists:
Hilary Berseth, Louise Bourgeois, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Patrick van Caeckenbergh, Jake & Dinos Chapman, George Condo, Anton Corbijn, Thierry de Cordier, Danny Devos, Tracey Emin, Tom Friedman, Line Gulsett, Damien Hirst, Roni Horn, Thomas Houseago, John Isaacs, Sergej Jensen, Nadav Kander, Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven, Anselm Kiefer, Esther Kläs, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz, Alastair Mackie, Christian Marclay, Kate MccGwire, Richard Prince, Leopold Rabus, Daniel Richter, Terry Rodgers, Sterling Ruby, Richard Serra, Andres Serrano, Stephen Shanabrook, Mircea Suciu, Gavin Turk, Jonathan Wateridge.

With the generous support of the Waldemar Koch Stiftung, the Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung, the Deutsche Factoring Bank and the Museumsfreunde Weserburg

---

PROOF OF LIFE / Lebenszeichen
The Weserburg | Teerhof 20, 28199 Bremen, Germany
19 May 2017 - 24 February 2018
Click here for more information.

EXHIBITION: Force of Nature

FORCE OF NATURE | curated by James Putnam | The Art Pavilion, Mile End Park | Clinton Road, London E3 4QY | 5 March — 9 April 2017 | PV 4 March 4-9pm.

EXHIBITION: Entangled

Entangled: Threads & Making | Turner Contemporary, Margate
Sat 28 Jan - Sun 7 May 2017

Entangled: Threads & Making is a major exhibition of sculpture, installation, tapestry, textiles and jewellery from the early 20th century to the present day. It features over 40 international female artists who expand the possibilities of knitting and embroidery, weaving, sewing and wood carving, often incorporating unexpected materials such as plants, clothing, hair and bird quills.

Entangled: Threads & Making is curated by writer and critic Karen Wright, with Turner Contemporary. Wright became fascinated by the making processes she saw first-hand on the many studio visits she did with artists for her ‘In the Studio’ column for the Independent. The idea for Entangled: Threads & Making evolved out of these visits, in particular one with renowned American artist Kiki Smith who was working on her epic tapestry Sky (2012), included in the exhibition.

The exhibition brings together artists from different generations and cultures who challenge established categories of craft, design and fine art, and who share a fascination with the handmade and the processes of making itself. 

A new publication accompanies the exhibition, with essays and interviews by Ann Coxon, Stina Högkvist, Siri Hustvedt, Kathryn Lloyd, Rosa Martínez, Marit Paasche, Frances Morris and Karen Wright. Available from the Turner Contemporary shop.

---

Karen Wright, Curator says:  

“When we first set out to create Entangled: Threads & Making, over 3 years ago, I was initially overwhelmed by how many artists wanted to take part in the show. It gave the idea currency, at a time when little had been done in investigating this area both in terms of gender, but also in terms of materials. For me, the show is an opportunity to re-evaluate the political status of women in the market place as well as the way that they use materials and express their concerns.”

---

WHITE LIES (Omission), 2015, Kate MccGwire - Photo: JP Bland

---

Artists: 
Anni Albers; Caroline Achaintre; Ghada Amer; Paola Anziché; Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir / Shoplifter; Phyllida Barlow; Marion Baruch; Karla Black; Margrét H Blöndal; Regina Bogat; Louise Bourgeois; Geta Brătescu; Sonia Delaunay; Sonia Gomes; Ximena Garrido-Lecca; Eva Hesse; Ann Cathrin November Høibo; Laura Ford; Mona Hatoum; Marianne Heske; Sheila Hicks; Susan Hiller; Maureen Hodge; Christiane Löhr; Kate MccGwire; Annette Messager; Rivane Neuenschwander; Lucy + Jorge Orta; Arna Óttarsdottir; Sidsel Paaske; Maria Papadimitriou; Anna Ray; Maria Roosen; Ursula von Rydingsvard; Hannah Ryggen; Betye Saar; Judith Scott; Samara Scott; Kiki Smith; Aiko Tezuka; Rosemarie Trockel; Tatiana Trouvé; Frances Upritchard and Joana Vasconcelos

---

ENTANGLED: Threads & Making | Turner Contemporary | Margate, Kent, CT9 1HG | 28 January - 7 May 2017 | Click here for more information.

---

PRESS RELEASE: Secrete

Kate MccGwire Secrete
27 October - 9 December 2016

Galerie Huit is delighted to present the Hong Kong solo debut exhibition ’Secrete’ by British artist, Kate MccGwire.

MccGwire (b. 1964, Norfolk, UK) is internationally renowned for her distinctive anthropomorphic sculptures, wall pieces and dark graphite drawings - made primarily using the naturally discarded ephemera of birds; feathers, quills and bones, displaced from their point of origin, MccGwire re-configures the organic matter to present a new form of contemporary sculpture. Employing natural materials, the artist explores the intrinsic value of organic beauty, via the play of opposites at an aesthetic, intellectual and visceral level. 

Since 2005, MccGwire has resided and worked on a barge moored on an island on the waterways of London, England. This parallels a key influence in her life - a childhood raised in the Norfolk Broads amongst a myriad of bird and marine life. The floating studio bears witness daily to the hierarchical order and fragility of the natural world and its surrounding eco-system. Such observations pose questions of a philosophical nature, some of which form the basis for recurring themes in the artist’s ongoing work. The varied assortment of organic detritus such as feathers that first fell near the boat captured the artist’s attention and the medium beckoned to her, and has done ever since.

The distinct contours that twist and curve in MccGwire’s sculptural forms also refer to early experiences with her father, a boat builder who first taught the artist to make knots. The serpentine sculptures displayed in found antique cabinets mimic such strong and robust knots, yet their scale infers the majestic human representations of Greco Roman classical sculpture. The animal form and human scale present a hybrid of both nature and man combined. Where the artist’s hand painstakingly attaches hundreds of feathers to the sculpted armature, alchemy asserts itself, suggesting a transformation of the mundane to the majestic and unique.

‘Secrete’ the exhibition, comprises a comprehensive body of work, including seminal early site-specific installations, and new and recent mixed media sculptures, wall pieces and drawings never before exhibited in Hong Kong.

Recently exhibited at the Musee de la Chasse, Paris, the mixed media installation of the same title ‘Secrete’, originally commissioned by the Hastings Coastal Currents festival, comprises a steel bucket that is tipped on its side with the contents spilling outwards onto the floor. The forming puddle consists of blue magpie feathers that shimmer in natural light.  In another part of the gallery, previously exhibited at the Archeological Institute, Athens and the Hydra Museum, Greece, the seminal site-specific piece with the onomatopoeic title ‘Heave’ gushes out from the wall with no visible beginning.  Both installations depict a surreal narrative.

Free-standing pieces such as ‘Flail’, ‘Orchis’, ‘Introvert’, that intertwine inside their glass cabinets and domes, are at once precious and caged. The human proportions in ‘Flail’ seem at odds with the antique vitrine it has been pressed within. In contrast ‘Orchis’, ‘Introvert’ and ‘Scylla’ presented in glass domes appear more intimate and intense.

By definition, the word ‘secrete’ describes two opposite actions - to generate and release or to hide and conceal. Such duality is ever present in McGwire’s work, either demonstrated through the clever juxtaposition of scale or marriage of hard and soft materials. Through re-cycling the antique and re-purposing natural materials, MccGwire’s distinctive hybrids connect the past to the present, placing a new definition of abstract sculpture at the centre.

Kate MccGwire lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include in 2016, I Prefer Life, The Reyden Weiss Collection, Weserberg, Bremen, Germany, Glass Fever, Contemporary Art in Glass,, Dordrecht Museum, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Force of Nature curated by James Putnam, Gallery Valerie Bach, Brussels, Belgium, Rare Bird, John James Audubon and Contemporary Art, Berman Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, US, In 2015,  Glasstress Gotika, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.

---

Kate MccGwire: SECRETE
Galerie Huit, 189 Queen's Road West, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
27 October – 9 December 2016

Reception:
4 November 2016, 6 – 9 pm

In-Conversation with Kate MccGwire: 
29 October 2016, 1 – 2.30 p.m. at Hong Kong Arts Centre

Curator’s Talk by Monica Chung: 
7 November 2016, 5 – 8 p.m. at Galerie Huit

INVITATION: Secrete

You are warmly invited to the reception for my solo show SECRETE at Galerie Huit Hong Kong on the 4th November 6-9pm, hope to see you there.

---

SECRETE: Kate MccGwire
Galerie Huit G/F, SOHO 189 Art Lane
189 Queen's Road West, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

For the reception on the 4th please RSVP to rsvp@galeriehuit.com.hk
Exhibition 27 October - 9 December 2016

PRESS RELEASE: Scissure

Kate MccGwire Scissure
La Galerie Particulière, 16 Rue du Perche, Paris 75003, France
3 September 2016 – 15 October 2016

La Galerie Particulière is pleased to present Scissure, an exhibition of intimate new work from British sculptor Kate MccGwire (3 September – 15 October 2016). Following MccGwire’s debut exhibition with La Galerie Particulière in 2012, Scissure presents a delicate and intricate collection of new works in white, a notable development from the iridescence of her acclaimed rooster and mallard feather pieces and the result of an influential time period in which MccGwire has sailed her studio barge from the Thames, across the Channel, to journey through the canals of Europe.

Kate MccGwire is an internationally renowned artist whose darkly unsettling, languorous and uncanny sculptural objects and installations are formed from immaculately hand-trimmed feathers and bones. Exploring the duality inherent in the materials she works with, MccGwire’s sculptures are at once alien and organic. Using the traditional techniques of the plumassier, fragile feathers are intuitively wound into undulating, curved forms. Repressed within glass cases and domes, or sinking into wall-mounts, revealing exposed and ragged cavities, the works contain a sense of brooding half-life, at once attractive and threatening. Her dramatic work, sinister and sensuous, addresses themes of darkness and light, beauty and decay. Visceral and enticing, MccGwire’s practice finds its home between craft and concept; using a level of intricacy that belies the natural forms she creates.

Taking inspiration from the cycle of life and death that marks the reality of living on water, Scissure references the juxtaposition of innocence and the invasive as MccGwire turns her attention to exploring the darker associations of pure white materials. The works are on a smaller scale than previous installations such as Evacuate or Gyre, exhibited at the Arnhem Fashion Museum; making use of innovative techniques, intricate handwork and obsessive attention to detail.

The works are painstakingly layered with pure white translucent goose down, creating an undulating form. Each glowing white 'body' is marked by an opening or incision which exposes a hidden, dark interior. The works appear exposed, suggesting a vulnerability associated with the purity of the white surface of the sculpture in conflict with a darker undercurrent. MccGwire’s work explores duality and parallel ideas of beauty and disgust, anguish and ecstasy.

Highlights include Pelt; a series of wall-mounted sculptures in white kid leather and crow quills. Reminiscent of flayed skin, harnessed and hung to reveal a pained and complicated interior, the leather the edges have been left rough, the unaltered original skin. The contract between the sensual folds and the animated spiked interior creates a visceral composition. Meanwhile Sentient is a soft, veiled form in goose-down, restrained inside an antique glass cabinet it embraces itself in a tight coil. The work is both sensual and unsettling, stifling itself as it writhes inside a glass mausoleum, seething in brilliant white its purity becomes its most unsettling feature.

MccGwire has experimented with a new form of ‘life drawing’ for Scissure, displaying a series of graphite drawings created by maggots crawling across a paper surface. Echoing the duality of MccGwire’s sculpture, the instinctive movement of the creatures from light toward darkness results in knotted tendrils of graphite, a visceral imprint of the movement of these sightless organisms. Not only exploring notions of disgust and decay from a new perspective, MccGwire has been fascinated to discover the repetitive shapes created in nature, universal structures that erupt from the organic movement or growth of plants, fungi and animals which she has reflected in these latest works on paper, Vermiculus (2016).

For the last twelve years MccGwire has worked in her Dutch Barge moored on the Thames, but for this exhibition she has sailed the 108-year vessel from London to Paris, crossing the Channel and navigating 2000km of the canals and waterways of Belgium and France. From its haven in London, through mainland Europe, 80 days of this journey will finally bring her to Paris to launch Scissure. The journey toward the exhibition has been both physically laborious and creatively inspiring, adding a performative element to the creation of new works, inspired by the ebb and flow of the tides, the changing landscape and experiences along the way. 

---

For press enquiries please contact: 
Damson Communications, Abigail Stuart-MentethT: 0207 812 0645 E: abigail@damsonpr.com

Kate MccGwire: Scissure 
La Galerie Particulière, 16 Rue du Perche, Paris 75003, France
3 September 2016 – 15 October 2016`
Tuesday to Saturday 11am - 7pm, and by appointment.

La Galerie Particulière: 
www.lagalerieparticuliere.com

---

PHOTOS: Ginza Maison Hermès

View fullsize

---

INCURSION: Kate MccGwire
Mixed media with rooster feathers.

Ginza Maison Hermès, Japan,
5-4-1, Ginza, Chuo-ku,
Tokyo 104-0061, Japan

20 January - 15 March 2016
Click here for more information

Photos: Satoshi Asakawa,
Courtesy of Hermès Japon

---