I am interested in the interplay of opposites which runs like a leitmotif through everything I do.
— Kate MccGwire
Kate McGwire is a London-based artist who spent her childhood in the Norfolk Broads. Her earliest memories of this distinctive landscape—dominated by wetlands, winding waterways, and the wildlife that inhabits the region’s waters—form the foundation of her practice, which draws inspiration from nature’s cycles, patterns, and dualities.
Working primarily with feathers, Kate McGwire engages in intensive processes of collecting, sorting, and cleaning her materials to create undulating, powerful forms that evoke classical sculpture and mythological creatures. Her works explore aesthetic dualities, being simultaneously alluring and unsettling; formal dualities, appearing both organic and abstract; and movement, seeming fluid yet remaining static. In her practice, McGwire celebrates feathers—often lost or discarded—as the means through which she articulates enigmatic anatomies that investigate both physical and introspective space.