Measuring ten meters long and towering overhead, a muscled, thick mass covered in iridescent black feathers swirls around itself and then dives into itself. Snaking out of the wall as if from a hell-like sewer, Gyre twists with the writhing energy of a sex-drunk lover. Seductive and nightmarish, intricately beautiful and somehow dangerous, the massive sculpture captures the sexy and eerie tone of Kate MccGwire’s exhibition at London’s All Visual Arts. More strange forms dot around the white space and carefully constructed, intimate works adorn the walls – all are as strangely feathered as they are indisputably dark. The alien-like sculptures are placed elegantly on display like taxidermied scientific specimen: under the heavy glass of antique bell jars and behind the doors of dark wooden cabinets. Due to the English winter chill, the icy hollow of the gallery feels like a sterile meat locker for a twisted collection of frozen monster parts.

Gyre (Installation). Mixed media with crow feathers. Photo courtesy of Kate MccGwire and All Visual Arts.

Appropriately named Lure, the title of the exhibition suggests that enchanting beauty is merely a veil for mortal danger, and that death can lurk behind some of life’s most dazzling enticements. A feathered fishing lure is, after all, glamorous bait for a merciless trap. Some of the feathery forms are secured with industrial, oversized clamps, their size and heft suggesting that the sinister work could re-animate and attempt escape (or worse?) at any given moment. One wall sculpture, called Host VII, has a shape that echoes the body of a woman: two rounded, stacked budges held together like a feathered corset. Yet, these feathers stand up in rows, creating flickering harrows in place of pleats. The gray pigeon feathers have rough, broken edges, and up close look more like lethal, jagged razors – as if anyone persuaded to stroke this curvaceous form would pull away with a handful of blood. Equally as enchanting and tempting to touch, two white works made of feather quills resemble sea anemones waving luxuriously in the seawater. Surge (Corvus) and Surge (Columba) may look like harmless and velvety sea life, but I am also reminded that such creatures often deliver deadly stings to unwelcomed trespassers.

Host VII. Pigeon tail feather and felt on wood. Photo courtsey of Kate MccGwire and All Visual Arts.

Surge (Columba), 2012. Pigeon quills on board, framed. Photo courtesy of Kate MccGwire and All Visual Arts

The artist’s Stigma series is also incredibly intriguing, wrought with a myriad of references and made with an unusual yet familiar combination of elements: lead and feathers. This pairing no doubt brings to mind the age-old riddle, ‘What weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?’ This riddle evokes and disturbs the assumptions we hold on such self-defining elements and speaks to the artist’s ability to change the inherent nature of such materials in her work. With the Stigma series, graphite gray sheets of patinated lead are pierced with wound-like ovals. Recalling the injured and burnt canvases of Alberto Burri, the scarred works suggest past violence and, as the titles suggest, are adorned with horrifying yet divine Stigmata. The lesions are also reminiscent of Hagfish mouths, and bits of feathers circle like rows of teeth. Awaiting like Venus fly-traps, a potential for violence also lurks beneath.

Stigma (Smirch), 2012. Mixed media with pigeon tail feathers and lead, framed. Photo courtesy of Kate MccGwire and All Visual Arts.

Rebecca Horn, Cockfeather Mask, 1973. Photo courtesy of Tate.

For all the violence, danger and disturbing nature of the seductive works on display, there is an undeniable sense of sensuality, sex and explicit naughtiness throughout the exhibition. Chains, leather and latex may be absent, but feathers, ropes and metal clamps stand brazenly in their place. Splice, a mounted, black, feathered braid, certainly suggests an often fetish-ized hairdo as well as a phallis, and Beguile, a small sculpture under glass, seems to be furtively tickling its own flipped and exposed underside. The stigmata of the lead works also sordidly recall alluring body orifices or the infamous vagina-dentada if you equate the spiked feathers with teeth. The sometimes naughty works of Rebecca Horn instantly come to mind, an artist who often made wearable, fetishistic feathered devices. Oozing with sensual energy and made to explore human intimacy, Horn’s works also equated human sexual displays to that of exotic fowl. With MccGwire, a large form in a cabinet, Cleave, is especially aesthetically sexual. It is unique it that it is covered in bright white feathers, a hint of innocence supported by the heart-like shape. Yet, the heart becomes inextricably female in form: kneeling, bending over or arching back while the opposite side of the sculpture seems to bulge and then thrust inside itself again.  The cleaved swells all exude from the figure’s axis: a clitorial center, tucked away and marked by a cluster of nerve-ending quills.

Cleave, 2012. Mixed media with dove/pigeon feathers/quills in antique cabinet. Photo by Tessa Angus. Photo courtesy of the Kate MccGwire and All Visual Arts.

Cleave (Detail), 2012. Photo by Tessa Angus. Photo courtesy of the Kate MccGwire and All Visual Arts.

MccGwire’s exhibition presents a delightfully tabooed feast for the eyes. Linking sex with death and desire with disgust, Lure hits at the very heart of Eroticism, meaning, the blending of such seemingly disparate objects in a climatic convergence, expressing the very height of the human sexual experience. Georges Bataille would say death is hypnotising. I would agree; but I would also suggest, it is also probably covered in feathers.

Kate MccGwire: Lure

On view from November 23, 2012 – January 26, 2013

All Visual Arts, 2 Omega Place, Kings Cross, London N1 9DR

www.allvisualarts.org

Morgan’s largest installation to date, currently on view at All Visual Arts in London, incorporates not only the taxidermic medium that drove her notoriety, but also hybrid mixed media sculptures, and drawings made from cremated bird remains, which remain true to her rather noir roots. The exhibition, entitled Endless Plains, was inspired by Morgan’s recent trip to the Serengeti and her own intimate encounter with mortality, interpreting the cycles of life and the inescapability of death through poetic and grotesque narrative forms. On the occasion of the exhibition, Morgan discussed with Michelle Schultz many of the inspirations for her latest work: those cannibalistic, parasitic and driven by decay.

Polly Morgan, Endless Plains, installation view, 2012. Courtesy All Visual Arts. Photography by Tessa Angus.

Michelle Schultz: Could you perhaps begin by telling me a little bit about your trip to Serengeti and how this is interpreted in your latest work in the exhibition Endless Plains?

Polly Morgan: I was inspired by the dead bodies littering the landscape, many of which had been hollowed out from within by vultures. Their skins had dried on the bones and they looked almost taxidermic. Seeing the dead alongside the living and just born, I felt I could see the whole of life being played out in front of me. Endless Plains, the translation of Serengeti, struck me as a perfect term for the landscape, which felt like a hall of mirrors – the same routine stretching from the past into the future.

MS: Your own encounter with mortality is something that is spoken about in relation to this exhibition – how this has influenced your work? In particular, perhaps how you have come to perceive the boundaries between life and death.

PM: It was just another reminder that I am part of this chain of life and death and there’s no avoiding it. I was particularly interested in the fact that I had had gangrene – a part of my body had died and decomposed inside me – and that I was simultaneously living and dying. I had a post-operative infection, where bacteria was spreading inside me – this felt like an invasion, leading me to think about the relationship between hosts and parasites, and changed the direction of my show slightly.

MS: Yes, I feel as though many of your previous works are quite quiet and poetic, but these recent sculptural works appear to be more violent and aggressive, and perhaps grotesque in a certain way – this could be seen as a result of your recent experiences.

PM: It might be. It is also a result of my becoming bored of my old work, which felt unchallenging and too easy on the eye. As soon as I stop feeling anything, I instigate change, in relationships/work/anything. I didn’t want to sentimentalise nature, which I was concerned some of my work was bordering on, I wanted to show it as it is; cannibalistic, predatory and unnerving.

MS: It no longer seems to me that you are trying to preserve that moment between death and decay as you have spoken about in relation to previous work, but rather now trying to preserve the state of decay itself. Would this be a fair statement?

PM: I hadn’t really thought of it like that but it is a fair remark. I felt it was no longer enough for me to present the animal as an ornament, I wanted to take it further and to show, albeit in a corrupted unrealistic way, what happens to a dead body or why it is dead in the first place.

Polly Morgan, production still, 2012. Courtesy of All Visual Arts.

MS: Now going back to the very beginning, can we talk about what instinctively brought you to taxidermy as a medium in the first place? When you began training with George Jamieson, were your intentions always to use taxidermy to create art, or were you considering a career as a traditional taxidermist? 

PM: I wasn’t thinking very far ahead as I’m not much of a planner. I was bored at work and wanted to learn something new and to become accomplished in a new discipline. I never saw myself as a traditional taxidermist – I thought no further than it being a hobby to start with. I noticed that many people I knew took a great interest in what I was doing and this inspired me to produce things that were worth looking at and perhaps purchasing. As I happened to be living in East London and socialising with people in the art world it was almost inevitable that they would be seen. I just wasn’t expecting people to like what I was doing as much as they did.

MS: Did you find taxidermy quite a difficult or challenging thing to learn?

PM: It takes a lot of practise and a lot of patience, which I don’t have much of. It is difficult to learn but then everything worth learning is. There were many frustrating moments where I would throw down what I was working on and myself on the bed in fury. All those moments make it even more rewarding when something works out so I am so happy I stuck at it, which is in part due to George’s support and part to my having been made redundant and the fear of having no other means of income.

Polly Morgan, Waxwing, 2012, taxidermy, cremated bird remains, 62 x 50 cm. Courtesy All Visual Arts.

MS: The series of drawings of bird’s nests shown in Endless Plains are very textural and quite delicate, and I understand they are made from cremated bird remains – could you tell me a little bit about the process involved and how they are made?

PM: I took the birds bodies to a pet crematorium, where they were returned to me as ashes. I started by buying a fine glue and doing invisible line drawings before scattering the ash over the paper to make the image appear. These worked but there was no shading or depth to the images which I wanted. I then bought some nibs for an ink quill and tried dipping this in diluted PVA. This way the line was much more varied and, coupled with a paintbrush, I managed to build up shaded areas. The shadow is created by finely ground ash (with a pestle and mortar), the lines by slightly grittier ash. It was a technique I took a month or so to develop.

Polly Morgan, Endless Plains, installation view, 2012. Courtesy All Visual Arts. Photography by Tessa Angus.

MS: They are very impressive. Now, throughout Endless Plains, there is a great deal of narrative and symbolism imbued in the works – particularly in the mixed media sculpture – could you tell me a little bit about the relationships between the fox and the octopus for example, or the symbolism of the pigs?

PM: The fox could have been any animal. I was thinking more about the juxtaposition of colours and textures against the octopus when I chose to use it. The octopus was used as it was redolent of intestines and phallic in shape. I liked the way it wrapped prettily round something like a vine, yet would suffocate its subject in doing so. The phallus is a symbol of fertility, compounded by the bud-like suckers, which I have birds pollinating in my sculpture. The octopus is the parasite when situated against the fox, yet becomes the host when pollinate by birds.

The piglets I chose as they are almost human in colour and form, which makes them all the more disturbing for their familiarity. I wanted to convey the parasitical nature of suckling young. Their plump pink bodies also remind me of ripening fruit or chrysalids.

Polly Morgan, Endless Plains, installation view, 2012. Courtesy All Visual Arts. Photography by Tessa Angus.

MS: With the piglets in particular, there is an interesting juxtaposition between taxidermy and mixed media. What drives the decisions behind what to preserve as taxidermy and what to sculpt?

PM: This was a practical decision. I wanted the pigs to look as plump and fleshy as possible. This wouldn’t work with taxidermy as they don’t have a dense covering of fur, which means the skin can look a little parched as it dries. In order for the viewer to get the full effect of these creatures, ripening on the branch so to speak, I think they needed to look almost hyper-real, far more achievable in silicone than taxidermy.

MS: Now, there is a lot of this mixed media work in Endless Plains, and while taxidermy continues to play a large part, it is not the sole focus – do you feel that you may eventually move away from taxidermy as a medium, or do you think this will always be a significant part of your work?

PM: I have no idea. But I would guess that I will eventually make work that has no taxidermy in it at all. I don’t want to discard a good idea that doesn’t involve animals just because I am concerned it won’t be recognisably mine.