Sadhbha Cockburn is an emerging artist, living and working upon Gadigal country in Sydney, NSW. She holds a BFA in Painting and an MFA in Drawing from the National Art School, and has a background in biomedical sciences. A recipient of an Australian Government Research Training Scholarship, she is currently completing a PhD in Visual Art at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She also currently works as a sessional drawing lecturer at the National Art School.

Working across sculpture, drawing and writing, Cockburn’s focus is on how slow gestures of care, practices of softening, and the poetry of feelings can be used to draw both artist and viewer into closer connection with their surroundings.

Her work is made predominantly from found and biodegradable materials in an effort to tread lightly upon Mother Earth. Leaning into ecofeminist relationships between the maternal and the material, she juxtaposes fabricated industrial objects with domestic ‘feminine’ handicraft to draw attention to the labour of creation (biological, geological as well as human).

Her current fascination is with felting seed fibres, spinning silk, collecting rusted nails and stringing her hair into thread. When not engaged in these things, you will likely find her walking, foraging or mulling over words.

Cockburn has participated in multiple group shows and prizes. She was a recent finalist in the Macquarie Emerging Art Prize (2025), the Northern Beaches Environmental Art and Design Prize (2025) and has been long listed for the Hunter Writer’s Centre ‘Grieve’ Anthology (2025). Recent group exhibitions include shows at Tamworth Regional Gallery, Schmick Contemporary, DRAW Space, aMBUSH gallery and airSPACE projects in Sydney. In 2023, she was awarded the Onslow Storrier Residency Prize at La Cité Internationale in Paris and the Foundations Residency Prize in Portland, NSW.