Dark Art

Kate MccGwire's work isn't the usual sort that I blog about, because there's an almost sinister quality to her sculptures, contrary to the often happy, colorful subjects my bloggery tends to revel in. But that's precisely what I find so fascinating.



There's such an other-worldliness to her pieces, which are simultaneously beautiful and unsettling. Covered completely in what look to be thousands upon thousands of feathers, her silently dynamic sculptures evoke huge collective masses, like migratory flocks of birds, or perhaps schools of fish, moving as one to create gestalt forms. Coiled volumes of plumage roil and disappear within themselves, like a pit of serpents eating each other; or they may spill out of walls like invading armies of rats. Needless to say I find the effects equal parts amazing and horrifying.

The luxurious iridescent sheen from the feathers she uses add an element of life to her sculptures, albeit one that is more than a touch macabre. But because of the absence of the animals that once possessed them, there's a strong, equal element of death.





There's also another grim overtone to her work, one of imprisonment. Encased in glass cases as some of them are, her forms seem trapped, like captive swarms writhing inside their proper museum cases forever in search of freedom. Even when MccGwire installs her work in sitio, they erupt from holes in the walls of decrepit rooms, cascading in torrents as if tasting their first breaths of freedom, only to gasp their last, ending up lifeless on the floors.



It's not easy to explain why work this dark appeals to me, yet I can't deny how much I'm drawn to it. Truth to tell, this blog entry took a long time to write because while my appreciation for the work was immediate, trying to explain why forced me to rewrite this entry more than any other that I've written for this blog. I may as well try to explain one's fascination with horror movies, or watching documentaries about how animals prey on one another, yet like those more mundane there are elements of attraction and fear that appeals to us. Hmm. Perhaps that's all the explanation I need.

For more on KateMccGwire, visit http://www.allvisualarts.org.

edit: Yatzer did an article on Kate MccGwire. Check it out for more on her amazing work.