Julie Cockburn The Ballad of the Starling in the Blossom, 2025

Julie Cockburn (b. 1966) works from found images, manipulating them with traditional craft techniques including collage and hand embroidery. By incorporating old, creased and forgotten photographs, paintings and postcards sourced from estate sales or online marketplaces, her practice enters into a pre-existing conversation. The abandoned and anonymous ephemera is nurtured and cajoled into a meaningful present.

Part of Cockburn's ongoing series of embroidered bird portraits, The Ballad of the Starling in the Blossom is constructed from found postcards combined with delicate, hand-stitched plumage. Counterbalanced with graphic embroidered dots, the birds are both real and otherworldly.