* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
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.
