sabbia gallery

Ceramics, Glass + Fibre

coc1_077

SOLD Ambient Lines of Grey 1, 2012, Bullseye glass, cane, fused, hot formed & cold worked glass, H 112 x W 112 x D 3cm

Main Gallery and Gallery Two   15 June - 09 July 2011

Cobi Cockburn – ESSE: Being in the Abstract

It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, through its TomorrowFund, has acquired the entire collection of works from this exhibition. Given that this is such a significant exhibition for Cobi Cockburn and Sabbia Gallery, we are extremely pleased that this work will be kept as a collection within such a prestigious public institution within Australia for future generations. This very important acquisition is a testament to Cobi Cockburn’s current standing within contemporary art in Australia.

‘esse’,…being in the abstract has been an 18 month journey for Cobi, with nine detailed works that reference landscape but ultimately are meditative, evocative and transportative.

The works in ‘Esse’ were created with the intention of not only forming a cohesive body of work, but also changing the emotive power of a space…. altering an open room to channel a personal journey and attempting an understanding of both a physical and spiritual landscape.

These works were driven by the personal quest to be receptive, to feel and be guided by a purely instinctive drive. In this exhibition I have tried to move emphasis away from both the chosen material and relevant techniques, and to focus more largely on the emotive power of a composition, and how as a whole they transmit a feeling.

I try to maintain an honest and contemplative relationship with my art: one that allows the idea to drive the work. My aim is to divine my way through elements of a world that I do not fully understand…. and the results represent the deep questioning that takes place during their creation.

Expressing a deep sense of presence with an undeniable sense of absence, sometimes holding opposing forces in a fine balance, these works explore my realities. They acknowledge elements I can not only see, but feel.

In my own reflections, I employ past moments to see beyond the now and the purely physical world, and to take my work and me into a place that I’m otherwise unable to reach again. To the memories of real people and experiences that enriched me, to waves that are the undercurrent of who and where I am now .

Within these works, I have used the landscape as a reference, a point of comfort and departure. These distant horizon lines are a strength that has no boundaries, a space that allows me to go beyond and seek a greater understanding.

This quest is a feeling that many artists have explored, some defining this timeless and unreachable element of art as a fourth dimension.

I have a small quote here from Kandinsky, whose broader writings were read to me as I created this body of work and it was through hearing these words that I felt both enlightened and encouraged to continue.

He wrote, ………..I believe, for instance, that the inner world of an artist should be expressed in the artist’s work, but more importantly, the notion that a work of art has as well as a material existence, an interiority, ‘a soul’.
Another definition for “the Fourth Dimension” is the very act of perceiving (consciousness) or feeling (sensation). Often thought of as the life of the mind.

Cobi Cockburn, 2011