Interview: Kate MccGwire On Discerning Duality, Connecting with Nature, and Making Art in the Belly of a Dutch Barge

Art
Colossal

#feathers
#Kate MccGwire
#nature
#sculpture

Interview: Kate MccGwire On Discerning Duality, Connecting with Nature, and Making Art in the Belly of a Dutch Barge

February 13, 2023

Kate Mothes

Shown above is “EVACUATE” (2010), mixed-media installation with game feathers, 120 x 400 x 350 centimeters. Photo by Jonty Wilde. All images © Kate MccGwire, shared with permission

Growing up on the Norfolk Broads, a network of waterways in the eastern lobe of England that are mostly navigable by boat, Kate MccGwire explored the area’s wetlands and observed wildlife that would set in motion an artistic practice centered in nature. The artist is known for her site-specific installations and serpentine sculptures that incorporate thousands of bird feathers into otherworldly specimens that writhe, squish, and spill.

Often there is an obfuscation of what we know to be real and a shift that allows a sort of reverie and suspension of reality, and due to the convincing placement of the feathers over natural undulating forms, the impression that it could be real, that it could move, flow, and uncoil. —Kate MccGwire

MccGwire speaks in this interview about the tensions and dualities between containment and movement, attraction and revulsion, and nature and the self.

Read the interview.