Kate Mccgwire

Kate MccGwire is an internationally renowned British sculptor whose practice revolves around the uncanny. Employing natural materials and in particular, feathers, MccGwire creates arresting, sensuous, otherworldly sculptures and site-specific works, exploring ideas relating to Sigmund Freud’s notion of the ‘unhomely’ and often rendering the familiar strange and disturbing.

This major monograph features works spanning her career, from the unsettling fabric and clothing works of the turn of the millennium through to the fantastical site-specific installation and interventions of her solo exhibition in 2020 at Harewood House. In her essay for the publication, independent curator and writer Jane Neal explores themes of childhood and family, nature and the body, physics and metaphysics, opening up connections between MccGwire’s works and myths, legends and belief systems across time and cultures. The second essay, by Dr Catriona McAra, an art historian and Curator at Leeds Arts University, explores MccGwire’s oeuvre in relation to the history of soft sculpture, abstraction and surrealism.

Lavishly illustrated with around 140 images, the publication has been edited by independent curator and writer Mark Sanders and designed and produced by Peter B. Willberg. It is published by Anomie Publishing, London.

Kate MccGwire (b.1964, Norfolk, UK), undertook a BA in Fine Art at University College for the Creative Arts, Farnham, before completing an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. Solo exhibitions include ‘Menagerie’, Harewood House, Leeds (2020); ‘Dichotomy’, The Harley Gallery, Welbeck, UK (2018); ‘Sasse/Sluice’, Aldeburgh Festival, UK (2018); ‘Secrete’, Galerie Huit, Hong Kong (2016); ‘Scissure’, La Galerie Particulière, Paris (2016); and ‘Covert’, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, Paris (2014). She has featured in group exhibitions at venues including the Fondazione Berengo, Murano, Italy; Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Guerlain House, Paris; Centre of Contemporary Art, Toruń, Poland; Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig, Germany; the Museum of Arts & Design, New York; and the Contemporary Art Society, London. In 2018 she was the winner of The Royal Academy of Arts, Jack Goldhill Award for Sculpture.