I’ll be honest with you: I’m a sucker for nostalgia in all her shapes and forms. I like cassette tapes and old school label makers. I inhale the pages of dusty books, seek out old family photographs taken in bad lighting, and collect cheesy handwritten postcards from back when postage stamps still had to be licked. Hence, Julie Cockburn — a British artist specializing in altered portraits using found photography, images, and paintings has struck a very deep chord in me. Laying plastic game parts, embroidery, collage and oil paint over each found item, Cockburn’s work confounds typical assemblage. Many of her re-imagined portraits resemble the facets of a gem, or crude impasto finger-paintings rather than actual people. Taking great freedom with each article she finds, Cockburn’s abstract manipulations brand her subjects with new identities and distorted histories — skewing their place in the world while simultaneously rescuing them from the trash bins of obscurity. There’s a playful, yet twisted quality to each fractured subject, caught somewhere between absurdity, forgotten memories and diluted grandeur. Altogether nostalgic and forlorn, Cockburn is also adept at using childhood drawings and kindergarten craft materials like popsicle sticks, stickers, beads, and thread to stirring effect.
      Chosen as a selected artist for Britain’s 2010 Marmite Prize for Painting, Julie Cockburn’s work will be shown as part of their traveling exhibition, ending in May. Two solo shows, both in London — at Matt Roberts Arts and John Jones Project Space are scheduled for later this year.