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Cow Parade 'terrorists'

David Ottewell
26/ 8/2004

MANCHESTER'S fibre-glass cows are quaking in their hooves after one of their counterparts in Sweden was kidnapped and beheaded by "art terrorists".

A group, calling themselves "Stockholm's Militant Graffiti Artists", snatched the cow off the streets of the Swedish capital. The cow-nappers later released a video of themselves clad in black balaclavas, standing beside the beast and threatening to dismantle it with drills unless CowParade - running simultaneously in Stockholm, Manchester and Prague - was declared "non-art".

The group's deadline passed yesterday and a video of the execution was sent to a Swedish newspaper. CowParade confirmed they had received the cow cut into pieces.

Charles Langhorn, managing director of CowParade Europe, described the stunt as "tasteless".

"We are happy to engage with individuals about what is art and what is not but this just leaves a bad taste in the mouth," he said. "CowParade is public and to a certain extent we expect a bit of `fun'. We have actually had less than we expected in Manchester and that reflects well on the good people of the city.

"With what happened in Stockholm, I think we are talking about a couple of fairly young guys and girls who did not really think things through. You are talking about criminal damage and the police are involved. It is just a bit tasteless."

The ill-fated Swedish cow, one of 70 in Stockholm, went missing last week from the city's modern art museum. The multi-coloured beast was decorated with a tyre around its middle and inspired by a sculpture of a goat by the American artist Robert Rauschenberg.