4/6/2008
Julie Cockburn
Forster, London
"Hundreds of neat stitches obliterate a face, silence a paper mouth. An area of a discarded print is somehow made more brilliant, rendered fresh and new, shining and bright against a dulled faded background."
We are proud to present Julie Cockburn's
first solo show with FORSTER gallery, a beautiful body of work inluding two
installations by the artist. A catalogue is being produced for this show
including an essay by Ben Cranfield. Hundreds of neat stitches obliterate a
face, silence a paper mouth. An area of a discarded print is somehow made
more brilliant, rendered fresh and new, shining and bright against a dulled
faded background. Across the folds of a well-worn map the embroidered
outlines of birds seem to question the hierarchy of legible space
identified by the cartographer’s lines. Mother and daughter inhabit
each other’s bodies with the eerie three dimensionality of a pop-up
book. All of these situations are created by Julie Cockburn from a potent
mixture of nostalgia and pathos for the neglected and the trashed. They
are rendered uncanny, even magical, by the artist’s staccato process
of intuitive response and laborious intervention. The materiality of
these pieces is crucial to their seductive and unnerving quality.
Cockburn’s materials are in themselves marginalised things,
problematic things - plasticine, embroidery thread, sticky back plastic,
tissue paper. However the materiality of the found objects is also crucial,
the certain over saturated, deeply contrasted quality of reproductions in
old books or the dusty but still iridescent feathers of a bird immortalised
by the art of taxidermy. This kind of junk shop, e-bay rejectamenta may
have now fully entered our language of irony and shameless appropriation
however, Cockburn strives to avoid irony, side-stepping it by the variety
and precision of her processes. Whilst an implicit awareness of the
confines of expectation and taste, gendered and class based languages of
decoration and craft are central to the innate politics of the work, first
and foremost, these are exquisite meditations on creativity and memory; the
possibilities that lie at the heart of personal and collective languages of
reference. In Ego Ego, (1970 - 2008) Cockburn has meticulously copied a
child’s drawing. Two image/objects now sit side by side, one is the
smooth, easy, unselfconscious abstraction of a child’s hand, a
confident hand working in watery paint. Its twin is a tight, textured thing
replicating its innocent sibling with painful detail and envious reverence.
This is the dual aspect of memory that at once celebrates and rarefies the
original event, rendering it magnificent in it’s remembering, whilst
in that moment of recollection, irrevocably changes and damages the
original. And so here Cockburn’s own childhood drawings which are now
rediscovered as acts of genius by the artist, who is always trying to
recover that forever lost freedom, are taken out of context and reanimated,
brought to life under the admiring gaze and yet, simultaneously altered,
perforated, obliterated forever more with a new memory. Just like the
stuffed birds, allowed through artistry to stay forever in their Dorian
Gray like prime, so too the personal memory of a childhood drawing or the
collective recollection of a Hollywood starlit is petrified, even
annihilated through exaltation, burning attention and incising adoration.
Julie Cockburn’s pieces are elaborate, intriguing and beautifully
executed, with an autonomy that makes one want to believe their existence.
Her work is in both public and private collections worldwide. She lives and
works in London.
Private View, Thursday 5 June, 6-9pm
Forster
1 Chapel Place, Rivington Street - London
Free admission