Katrina Cobain

I am a multidisciplinary artist from Ireland living and working in Glasgow. Through the mediums of performance, sculpture, writing and video, my work tells stories from the late capitalist era, with a focus on the duplexity of materials and cognitive dissonance prevalent in our time. Drawn to absurdity, and its usefulness to puncture darkness or hopelessness, my work has a subtle humour at times, which I consider another form of resistance.

Writing is a tool I use in correspondence with object making to push a narrative forward, which is a crucial relationship in my practice. For example, my project researching Lithium began with writing a simple statement, misremembered from my GCSE chemistry exam: Lithium burns brick red.

For years I have tried to shy away from the fact I am a multidisciplinary artist. I love to make sculpture, perform, write and make films, and often one of these mediums will take over and lead, but they are all fundamental to each others existence. When I realised I needed to do all of them in tandem, my practice flourished. I felt I needed to focus on one, a niche, as a hangover from a capitalistic perspective instilled in us. It is easy for some people to trust their gut and know what it is they need, but for me it took a little longer to accept my own ways of working.

The ideas I explore in my practice relate to being someone who experiences the world with a mental health condition and is queer. Often I don’t see these links until after the work is complete. Slowly this is something I am becoming more aware of, and it’s influence on my practice.

Katrina Cobain is an Irish artist and writer based in Glasgow. 


Through the mediums of performance, sculpture, writing and video, her work tells stories from the late capitalist era, with a focus on the duplexity of materials and cognitive dissonance prevalent in our time. Drawn to absurdity, and its usefulness to puncture darkness or hopelessness, her work has a subtle humour at times, which she considers a form of resistance.

In 2020 Katrina began The Plastic Bag Museum, an online performative museum highlighting carrier bags' social and design history, while highlighting plastic’s material qualities and existential threat. This has led to correspondence with collectors all over the globe, and an ever expanding collection. The first in person exhibition of the collection will be shown as part of Coventry Biennial 2025.

Recent exhibitions include Urgencies 2025, CCA Derry~Londonderry, and A Hundred Thousand Times at The Glasgow Project Room. Katrina was also a participant in Syllabus VII in 2024/25, a collaborative alternative learning programme hosted by Wysing Arts Centre in partnership with Eastside Projects, New Art Exchange, PS2, Spike Island, Studio Voltaire and TACO!. She holds a BA (Hons) in Sculpture and Environmental Art from Glasgow School of Art, and has undertaken residencies at Hospitalfield, Arbroath, the Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh and the Copeland Bird Observatory in NI.

https://www.katrinacobain.com/