Study for Cow Mutations

The British artist Tim Head won First Prize in the John Moores competition in 1987 with his painting 'Cow Mutations', now in the Walker's collection [WAG 10612]. The recurring cow motif in this work was based on the milk-carton packaging used by the supermarket Sainsbury’s in the 1980s. In both the drawing and painting Head has repeated the stylised image of the cow until it becomes almost unreconisable and unnatural. This mutation, based on a supermarket's packaging, reflects on the division between society and the natural world and in this the case the seperation between milk and the animal which produced it.