TALK: Marvellous Menagerie

Kate MccGwire is joined by Catriona McAra to explore the themes of the feminine grotesque that have come to characterize MccGwire's work.

Dr Catriona McAra & Kate MccGwire

An in-conversation celebrating a major new monograph on the mesmerizing sculptures of English artist Kate MccGwire! She is joined by essayist Catriona McAra to explore the themes of the feminine grotesque that have come to characterize MccGwire’s work. McAra will trace over two decades of MccGwire’s career as it segues through the lessons of soft sculpture, surrealism and postminimalism, drawing from the likes of Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Dorothea Tanning towards the raw animal masses of Berlinde De Bruyckere and others. 

Kate MccGwire is an internationally recognized sculptor known for her distinctive aesthetic formula and innovative use of feathers. The feminine grotesque and the uncanny have sustained a significant hold over MccGwire’s creative imagination over the last twenty years, with interlocking thought-forms and otherworldly beings dominating her oeuvre. Her muscular, epic, knot-like artworks exploit dichotomous feelings of revulsion and desire, troubling boundaries of the wild and the civilized.

Dr Catriona McAra is Assistant Director, Heritage Collections and Curation at the University of St Andrews. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art history with particular interests in feminist-surrealist legacies. Her forthcoming books include Ilana Halperin: Felt Events (MIT and Strange Attractor, 2021) and The Medium of Leonora Carrington (Manchester University Press, 2022). Recent writing on MccGwire includes ‘Boundary Creatures’ (Anomie, 2021) and ‘Menagerie’ (C8, 2020).

Kate MccGwire in Conversation | Zoom Lecture | 24 January 2022 | 8 - 9:30 pm.

The accompanying book is published by Anomie Publishing, edited by Mark Sanders. Designed and produced by Peter B. Willberg. It features essays by Catriona McAra and Jane Neal. Now available: Kate MccGwire | (anomie-publishing.com)

MONOGRAPH REVIEW: Julie de Libran

Julie de Libran is a Paris based fashion designer. Julie has been following my work for over a decade; in her review, Julie talks about the first impressions of my sculptures, their scale and relationship with the surroundings.

“I have been a great admirer of Kate‘s work since the first time in 2008 I came across it as part of an exhibition at MoMu Antwerp. Her sculpture GYRE took up the whole room with each feather delicately placed in a meticulous way, I was mesmirised by its extreme beauty, force and astonished by its size and form.

I love the way Kate has photographed her work throughout the years in unique environments. Each setting contrasting her work beautifully allowing the work to glow spectacularly from the image.

Congratulations on this beautiful book, keep on inspiring us, Kate...”

MONOGRAPH REVIEW: Clare Lilley

Clare Lilley is a curator and director of programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In her review, Clare shared her impressions of the monograph and my career so far.

”I thought I knew Kate MccGwire’s work well, but to see it unfolding here in such stunning photographs is so powerful and an absolute inspiration. The texts are superb. It is a beautiful publication that represents an exceptional career.”

MONOGRAPH REVIEW: Keith Roberts

Keith Roberts is a scientist, writer and curator. In these selected excerpts from his insightful review of the monograph, Keith examines ambiguity and eroticism in my work.

“The work is darkly and genuinely sensational.”

“<The works> are ambiguous <in their sexuality>. Feathers are used by male birds to seduce, and although many works have female attributes, they are <often> far tougher, more androgynous, far more aggressive, far more thrusting, and sometimes definitely far more ‘male’.”

“Works like Cleave and Pelt seem to invoke the mythical vagina dentata, threatening castration, but at the same time seductive and luring. ‘Cleave’ is one of only a handful of words in the English language that have two diametrically opposing meanings, to cling to as one, or to split asunder, as ambiguous and alluring as the works themselves. Love and hate, sex and death – enter triumphant and exit diminished! I used to quite like Koestler’s explanation of creativity (and jokes) as often arising when one matrix of knowledge or expectation is mixed unexpectedly with another, and I find much of that is true in many of <MccGwire's> works.”

“There are two clear kinds of works in the book, that reflect the ambiguity throughout the works. On the one hand are the confined, constrained, corseted constructions, usually constricted within anaerobic cabinets or domes. And on the other are the emetic fluid eruptions, emerging energetically from erotic environmental orifices of various descriptions. The latter works reflect on the open idea of liquid as an erotic or maternal medium — secretion, ejaculation, lactation or amniotic fluid, while the former reflect on more closed ideas of transgressive constraint, repression and captivity.”

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MONOGRAPH REVIEW: Rowena Chiu

Rowena Chiu is a London based independent curator. In her reflective review, Rowena summarised my enthralment with dualities of nature, and how this is represented through illustrations and essays in the monograph.

“Seeing the experimentation and development of Kate MccGwire’s oeuvre over twenty years compiled into this richly-illustrated monograph underscores the artist’s enthralment with nature and inherent respect for the majesty and dimensionality of both her material and its origins.”

"The vivid images in the monograph impress upon the iridescence and hypnotic three-dimensionality of the material used by Kate MccGwire, which is emphasised by MccGwire’s adept manipulation of it."

"The essays in Kate MccGwire’s monograph rightly situate her work on the boundaries of classical mythology, surrealism, post-minimalism, feminist art and soft sculpture, yet it is apparent that the work in its slippage has shaped a distinctive practice in which these art historical references fuse with MccGwire’s visceral appreciation of the magnificence and dualities of nature."