Michelle McKinney is a U.K based artist working in ultra fine woven metal. Originally gaining a B.A in Jewellery Design and Silver Smithing from the Birmingham School of Jewellery, Michelle quickly realised that her artistic practise was leading her to create work on a much larger scale. Her attention to detail and knowledge on metalwork are skills that she learnt while studying, and are very important aspects of her artistic practise today.

Michelle Mckinney’s art is work of elegant simplicity which, in itself, is the first of many seductions into an engagement with a complex network of tensions. The work is embedded in the clear space between opposites; the movement captured in stillness; the fragility and ephemerality of nature captured in the strength and permanence of industrial, man-made materials, and inexorable freedom within the clinically defined limitations of space. It is the dialogue that takes place between these polarities that engage so forcefully. This play between the timeless and the immediate is at the heart of Michelle’s work. However tranquil the order of the instant may seem, it cannot segregate itself from the underlying chaos of nature and it is this engagement with chaos that we are lured, so unassumingly, by the captivating simplicity of order.

Michelle has created artworks for a number of high profile clients including The British Council, The Crafts Council, The Royal Albert Memorial Museum, and most recently a collaboration with designer, Issey Miyake.

Michelle has also taken part in exhibitions in many countries and cities such as Paris, New York, Stockholm, and London. Her art is part of the permanent collection at The Royal Albert Museum, Exeter.

In May 2018, Michelle completed an art installation for Michelin star chef, Tom Sellers, in his central London restaurant, “Restaurant Story” in which hundreds of woven metal swallows are suspended from the ceiling in flight.