Cairistiona Cockburn

Memory is the core of my practice. Stemming from conversations I've had with multiple generations in my family, my work has extended into areas of identity and recollection. My individual existence and its occupation of space and language is the starting point in understanding my place in the world. 

Through a multidisciplinary approach, my practice is haunted by the obsession to understand and remember where I’ve come from, while also engaging with the natural process of deterioration in recollection.  I have a deep concern with my choice of materials and their ability to represent and communicate a tangible thread between the past and the body. This relationship to the familial and spaces which I have belonged to is the occupation of my work, most notably through the mediums of sculpture, drawing and sound. 

Architectural structures and space appear in my work in an examination of collective being across the past and present. Represented as homes, containers for our past selves these spaces are significant in how they linger in the mind. Like our names, qualities of the home resonate and are ingrained in our identity and I view my practice as a way to dissect and reflect that which is a part of us.