The Gallery at Winchester Discovery Centre

LURE: Kate MccGwire

21 June – 28 August 2013

A solo exhibition by internationally renowned artist Kate MccGwire. Working with pigeon, magpie, crow and jay feathers, MccGwire creates staggeringly beautiful forms that seduce and repel in equal measure.

MccGwire will fill the gallery with her strange, coiled, animal-like sculptures. Resembling exquisite specimens drawn from a medieval bestiary or a 19th-century natural history display, these hybrid 'creatures' – if indeed they are 'creatures' – defy the usual categories of fish and fowl. They are meant to keep you guessing. To unsettle.

The feathers themselves are collected by a UK-wide network of pigeon-fanciers and game-keepers, with whom MccGwire is in constant contact. Their birds are the mainstay of her work; to their keepers the moulted feathers are little more than detritus but to MccGwire they are precious – each feather unique.

Dominating the space will be 'Gyre', a monumental form made from thousands of crow feathers that took MccGwire and her assistants months of painstaking work to complete. Come and marvel: this is an exhibition not to be missed.