Katrina Cobain
Katrina Cobain, The Plastic Bag Museum (Image from ‘Notes on Bags’), 35mm Photograph, 2024. Courtesy: The Artist and Robert Carter
Katrina Cobain is a visual artist from the North of Ireland who is based in Glasgow. She has a degree in Sculpture and Environmental Art from The Glasgow School of Art.
Through the mediums of performance, sculpture, writing and video, Katrina’s 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 the social and design history of carrier bags, while exploring plastic’s material qualities and the existential threat that they present. The Plastic Bag Museum has led to correspondence with collectors all over the globe, and an ever expanding collection of bags and related ephemera.
This short video of Katrina talking about the project was made by local photographer, documentarian and Coventry Biennial 2021 exhibitor Alan Van Wijgerden:
Coventry Biennial 2025 represents the first full scale exhibition of what Katrina describes as “the institution under your kitchen sink”.
Katrina’s recent exhibitions include Urgencies 2025 at CCA Derry~Londonderry (Northern Ireland) and A Hundred Thousand Times at The Glasgow Project Room (Scotland). 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!.
