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(3.83 - 140 votes)About Kate:
Kate MccGwire’s work asks questions about the very nature of beauty. She’s intrigued by the possibility of envisaging beauty as something more complex than merely what delights the senses: beauty can be about a problem; it can be something that repels you or makes you question the status quo. The idea that it is a cultural phenomenon, susceptible to argument through the creative process, fascinates her.
Intrinsic to her method is the collecting and sorting of materials from hundreds of different sources over a period of months, even years. In turn, pieces evolve intuitively as if out of the subconscious, the language evocative rather than purely illustrative. As the work takes shape, a new, playful reality emerges, so that the object itself becomes a sort of prism, refracting the layers of meaning and cultural associations buried within, the quantity of materials used sometimes deliberately overwhelming, as if charged with a power and ambition beyond the reach they possess when seen in isolation.
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Kate Mccgwire's Feathered Forms Challenge Our Perception Of Beauty
London based Kate MccGwire challenges our perception of beauty, taking feathers from birds commonly viewed with disdain and re-framing them to create ...
Kate McGwire
Artist Kate McGwire's installations and sculptures are truly beautiful if not a bit disturbing. The simple layering of feathers seems innocent but, th...
clicking on the individual works on the artist’s website gives you a detailed list of materials. pigeon feathers, glue, polystyrene, etc…
I think the painstaking way that the feathers are laid out in waterlike patterns is beautiful. The use of such a delicate , light material to create the image of such a powerful force as a gushing water main exemplifies the artists statement perfectly. kinda makes me want to go pluck some pigeons.
Comment by griffin — May 21, 2009
Very cool!
Comment by Eram — May 21, 2009
I dig it, great texture and colors. It looks as though the feathers are all coming together to form life as in creation, or it could be that the forms are degenerating into a pile of feathers such as the destruction or ending of life.
Comment by Duck — May 21, 2009
I’m unable to visually process what I’m looking at. Even going to the artist site doesn’t help.
Vagueness doesn’t make good art >:[
I’m just frustrated because it’s like they’re being purposely evasive.
Comment by XJAEVA — May 21, 2009
It looks like feathers over a form. That is pretty amazing.
Comment by Anonymous — May 21, 2009
feathers?
Comment by bethany — May 21, 2009
mattgreermusic:
medium looks like feathers. hmm.
Comment by Anonymous — May 21, 2009
To mattgreermusic:
They are feathers!!!
Comment by Josh — May 21, 2009
It’s really beautiful and intriguing work, but like others have stated, instead of all the silly and rather pretentious blather about the meaning behind it, how about a word or two about the medium? It mentions “quantity of materials.” What sort of materials are we talking about here? Tell me more about that!
Comment by lsh — May 21, 2009
@mattgreermusic The only medium I see is feathers. There’s a few closeups on her website, two of them on the home page, but you may have to refresh a few times to see the right ones. One of the photos shows that some of the feathers in the second work on this page, Vex, has text printed on them. I wonder if they’re synthetic, or if they’re really all found.
Comment by Chris — May 21, 2009