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