Runcorn – in the not so grand scheme of things – is an irrelevant town sandwiched between the cultural titans of Liverpool, Manchester, and Warrington. To an outsider, it’d be easy to overlook a place like Runcorn. According to Tigga’s “Empire State of Runcorn’s State Of Mind” on YouTube, the town is famous for an advert promoting cheese. An advert which no-one my age or even my parents or grandparents (all life-long Runcorn residents) have ever heard of. Says it all, really.
Like most poor North West towns, Runcorn has a complicated relationship with the arts. We’ve had conventional art in the form of grand, approved murals and the Southgate Estate built by architect James Stirling. Then there’s the classic cultural attractions such as the Fiddler’s Ferry cooling towers. But what’s the one thing they all share in common? The council has torn them down.
Where Runcorn truly shines is in its graffiti. We have the standard tags from unknowns such as the inescapable Twist, random promotions, the occasional so-and-so’s a nonce, and actual art, such as Cow.
image credit: Liverpool Echo
The only modern stroke of creative genius in Runcorn came from Cow. The Southgate estates were interesting, the Runcorn mural was appealing, and the cooling towers memorable – but there’s always been something more engaging about the unknown. What possessed someone to paint a cow onto an often unseen wall in the middle of nowhere? How did it gain such a notable adoration throughout the town? To me it was the simplicity of it. A cow, nothing more. Something you’d see every once in a while when driving under a bridge or walking for a bus. The mystery of it all is what truly makes it meaningful.
Do you know what isn’t meaningful though? A dragon with the head of Bart Simpson. I’ll never get over this. Randomly, during the Covid years, somebody decided to spray paint a nonsensical Bart Simpson dragon over Cow. Don’t have a cow man, indeed. One of Runcorn’s last surviving pieces of thoughtful artistic expression was stripped away and replaced with a design you’d see on a 90s Spanish market t-shirt, a few racks over from the four-stripe Adidas. Clearly, this didn’t only get on my nerves. Runcorn needed vengeance. Weeks later we were gifted artistic karmic justice in the form of a new, disobedient Cow.
image credit: Julian Cowley
As shown, the dragon was pretty heavily vandalised and rightfully so. Originally, revenge came in the form of a single cow head over Bart’s. Then the artist resprayed it, resulting in 10 additional cows to truly drill in the message. Why desecrate an iconic piece of artwork when there are two perfectly suitable walls to either side of it? Honestly, Dragon Bart was cool. It was well designed and vibrant and could easily have become the next iconic piece of Runcorn artwork alongside Cow. This town was definitely big enough for the two of them. With the dust of this battle settled, I’m just glad the Cow remains in one way or another.
Luckily enough, the identity of the graffiti artist – who will remain unnamed – happens to be a very loosely kept secret in my part of Runcorn, which made it simple to track them down for an interview. I spoke with the artist who had this to say regarding their actions:
Q: What did Cow mean to you?
A: The cow that was painted on the bridge had been there for 20-plus years and every time you went past it was there. It was just part of the route to go through Runcorn, it was something everyone had seen. It had never been defaced or vandalised before, it was quirky and just one of the vaguely significant pieces of Runcorn.
Q: What did you think of the defacing?
A: When I saw it had been defaced I was horrified, because it was defaced by somebody who had deliberately painted over it with their own thing which was completely non-relevant to the area. It just seemed as the most disrespectful thing, it was like somebody defacing the Mona Lisa. It was ridiculous. It was a nonsensical dragon design painted over the whole Cow, something which had been there for years which no one in the past had ever defaced. When it happened there were lots of posts on social media complaining and wondering why. There was a sense that people were sad about it, it was something that had been there for so long and just gone – vandalised.
Q: Why did you decide to respray the cows?
A: I was so annoyed and surprised that someone could do this with no respect for something with a 20-plus year history. I just thought: “I’m not putting up with this.” And I hatched a plan to deface his own work. I’m not an artist, I just made a rough stencil out of cardboard of a cow’s face, bought spraypaint and after a couple of drinks I decided to deface his defacement. In the early hours of the morning, I went out with my stencil and spray paint, sprayed the cow over the face of Bart Simpson, left, then did the same a week or so later.
Q: Do you encourage graffiti?
A: Graffiti is art. Decent graffiti is art.
As odd as it was, Cow meant a lot to people in this town. Enough that people took immediate action to avenge it, rallying behind it and dedicating hours online to its memory. Just weeks after the end of the Cow vs Dragon Bart fiasco, more people began to vandalise the dragon in Cow’s honour. Random members of the public took it upon themselves to write “Cowwww,” and “Cow Wall,” or “The Cow is Back.” On the face of the first resprayed cow head are the words “Home Sweet Home,” (which our anonymous vigilante clarified was not his work). It’s a meaningful act of community pushback – locals showing how important their art is to them.
Ultimately, art is subjective. And with a council seemingly bent on the destruction of our artistic demise, there’s no room for infighting. That may seem contradictory. How is it fair for Runcorn’s nostalgia-seeking residents to beat on a piece of art covering an iconic image? For all I know, Cow could have been following a long line of artists working on top of each other’s work. But unlike those possibly forgotten pieces, Cow, as random as it was, was an iconic piece of Runcorn history. Dragon Bart had its own right to existence, but it wasn’t on Cow.
I will always respect the rebellion of the artist who resprayed the cows and maybe we should owe some of that bravery to the artist behind Dragon Bart, too. To the people of Runcorn: continue to share; create and improve our scenery. After all, we know the council won’t. Give the children of today something to write an article about in 14 years. Make something worthy of getting upset about when it’s gone. When the next generation removes your work, relish in reading how you made an impact on someone’s life. That’s something every artist hopes to achieve.
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