Kate McGwire creates compelling, darkly sensual sculptures by layering feathers on serpentine structures. Referring to the Möbius strip, the shapes appear to curl and undulate within themselves, with dense and perfectly placed feathers adding an organic quality and flow to each piece. The viewer’s eyes naturally follow the feathers, like watching the flow of a river, giving the illusion that each piece is gently twisting – they seem to either twist in an infinite loop or explode with stunning explosive force, like a stream of water breaking through a wall.
McGwire has been working with organic, natural materials like wood and bone for years, but it was her feather sculptures that seemed to put her on the art map, both for their craftsmanship and the profound sense of power they exude. Whether it’s a small sculpture housed in its own little bell jar, or a massive room-sized installation, the number of feathers required to create each sculpture is staggering.
For example, the three-meter-long sculpture “Corvid” used more than 10,000 feathers, and it took several years to collect enough!
This ongoing and painstaking search for material required McGwire to hunt for feathers across England through a network of pigeon racers, gamekeepers and members of the public. She considers her collaboration with the feather collectors who help her to be integral and inspiring to her creative process. She’s also one of the seemingly few artists who actually not only thanks her contributors and assistants, but publicly thanks them on her website! One of the few things she doesn’t choose to talk too much about is her actual construction of the sculpture. While the feathers were installed with the help of experts—the actual underlying structure was conceptualized and created solely by McCGwire—she wouldn’t reveal too much. This makes the work somewhat mysterious and thought-provoking.
