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