does a cow know when a storm is coming?

Jamie Tilley

Using performative and constructed scenes, landscape and studio photography - each image in isolation, as well as part of a group, alludes to wider concepts. The work references the interdependent relationship between nature and technology, the past and the future and how this permeates contemporary lifestyles - alone and distracted whilst walking into a future existential crisis.

The title ‘does a cow know when a storm is coming?’ refers to the folklore that a cow will lie down when rain is due. A simplistic and inane visual cue used to predict complex and multifaceted weather systems based on no scientific evidence.

As we navigate the seamless, sterilised, transient and privatised spaces of our current era - our inferences based on hearsay, stories and social media posts are ill-equipped to deal with today's larger and more complex geopolitical, economic and heavily mined systems. We are perhaps the ones laying down, alone as islands, embellishing the devices and methods of our own subordination - unsure if it will rain.

Artist biography

Jamie Tilley has been working as a visual artist, art director and commercial fashion and still life photographer since completing an MA in Photography at the Cambridge School of Art in 2016.

He has exhibited in London, most recently at the Jeannie Avent gallery with friend and co-worker Sam Hadfield and was selected for the Metro Mentorship Award in 2017.

He has been published in print and online by Subjectively Objective, AintBad, Schon Magazine, Contributor Magazine and has worked commercially for clients such as Tom Ford, Belstaff, Jimmy Choo, De Beers and Fred Perry.

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does a cow know when a storm is coming?, Jamie Tilley