Holy Cow!

5 March, 2017

Image 1

One thing you cannot miss when you come to Shepparton, is the vast amount of decorative cows filling the city. It left me wondering, what is this place’s obsession with cow’s? When I entered the Contemporary Textile Art Exhibition the overwhelming use of cows in art finally provoked me to ask, what is with the cows? What I found is that the statuesque ones around Shepparton are from an artist involved in Moovin Art. It is an art form that is apparently done internationally. I guess the city of Shepparton just ran with it and now it is a sort of mascot for them.

Image 2

The cows were even in the festival's artwork! The textile art pieces had images of cows or a dress that seemed to be made of cow skin. One of the art pieces in this exhibition was a wool 3D model of buildings, trucks and farm area, created by Jean Miles. This piece is meant to be interactive and visitors are allowed to play and move around the pieces as they would like. The artist would later come back to see how things had been moved. Obviously, I had to take the opportunity to reorder things around. I decided to surround the cows around the knocked over milk truck, I guess you could call it a mootiny. The rest of the artwork was very interesting, incorporating a lot of pieces literally popping out of the art. The craftwork that went into these pieces are visually engaging and allows us to appreciate multiple mediums, both in 2D to 3D.

(Image 1. Jean Miles O.A.M., Shepparton 2017)

(Image 2. just me posing with one of the many cows in Shepparton)