The visual focal point of the arts festival has to be Gottfried Helnwein's huge photographic images displayed on the streets of Kilkenny. Originally from Austria, Helnwein is now based in County Tipperary. His display of works on the streets of Kilkenny, and in Butler House, is testament to the power of this man's visual imagery. Helnwein's concerns could be viewed on a political level, indeed in his own homeland his work has been hounded by controversy, as he directly pinpoints neo-Nazi neuroses.
'Epiphany I: Adoration of the Magi' depicts a beautiful Madonna and Child being examined by Himmler's elite SS officers. This is strong stuff, with piercing connotations on the interaction of religion, politics and power in the 20th century. Juxtaposed with these images are a series of enlarged photographs of children's faces from Kilkenny. Hung in the same manner as billboard advertisements on buildings and walls, these photographs, with their silent, shut-eyed subjects, are meditative comments on life in the making. ...

No better way was this shown than with the giant canvasses draped along the castle and around the streets of the city. For those who didn't know the work of Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein, his huge pictures of local children were a delight.
The canvasses showing images from the Nazi era just left them confused, but the throngs who visited Kilkenny during the weekend snapped away with their cameras all the same.
Ms Anne Quiggle who was on a tour from Minnesota wasn't impressed, however. "It doesn't belong on the castle. It's ruining the view," she said.
Ms Joni Delaney O'Connell, the tour organiser, said the Nazi images were just "too political" for an arts festival.
Mr Seamus Raben from Celbridge came to see Helnwein's work. "The craftsmanship is outstanding, and it's great how he involves himself with the local community," he said. ...

Workmen finish one of a series of prints measuring 9.3 metres by 6.2 metres by Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein.The prints of Kilkenny children will hang on buildings in Kilkenny as parts of its arts festival beginning on August 10th. ...

The disturbing Work of Helnwein comes to Ireland Helnwein is a headline artist who works in tight sound bites on a very large scale. The works brand themselves with proof of his technical know-how in various media and are endorsed by the coolest celebrities of his generation. So much for the cover-story, so what lies within? Headlines lure you into stories that make you want to cry, smile or help to change the world. But when they stop at your own skin, you can get a sinking feeling, a sense of the bigness and badness outside and the impossibility of change. ...

Exhibition - catalogue
One man show, Butler House, Kilkenny
Installation in the Kilkenny city center
Introduction by Claire O'Donoghue
Essay by Mic Moroney

Ninety children from around the city and country were photographed by the artist here in the High Street and nine are displayed in central locations around the city, dramatically enlarged up to 9 metres high. This ongoing project, begun here, will continue in other cities and towns in Ireland as the artist intends to expand the work to include one thousand Irish children. These beautiful,confident and happy children from Kilkenny contrast starkly with some of his more disturbing imagery. The juxtaposition of historical photographs of the Nazi regime with religious imagery of the Madonna and Child in the "Epiphany" series can make uneasy viewing not only in Germany and Austria but also here in Kilkenny.
Amongst a number of possible readings of these works is the uncomfortable relationship between the church and oppression in its various forms. However, as the artist Nolde said, "harmless pictures seldom mean anything". Nolde was banned from painting by the Nazi regime. ...

RECORD numbers are expected to visit Kilkenny's art festival over the next week.
Organisers say attendance at shows and exhibitions on the first weekend indicates that up to 80,000 people will have visited by the time the 10-day event finishes next Sunday.
The main talking point of the festival is a series of paintings including one by world-renowned Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein, who took an old photograph of Adolf Hitler surrounded by children and replaced it with the Madonna and Child surrounded by SS officers.
Heinwein's paintings are hanging on a number of buildings around the city, including Kilkenny Castle, the National Irish Bank and the Watergate Theatre.
Funding for the festival is the highest to date with the organisers receiving more than £400,000. ...

...

Most of the city pictures emerge from a deceptively simple strand of Gottfried's work, the frank photography of children's faces. He photographed over ninety children in Kilkenny. Now these kids are immortalised, larger than life in their extreme youth, and dotted around the gable-ends and walls of their native town; there eyes closed in beautiful, breathless meditation. Mounted in a manner which is normally the preserve of billboard advertising, these are quietly awesome images of the city's youngest inhabitants. ...

Once an agitated spectator wondered how an apparently nice man could produce such disturbing imagery. Helnwein replied: "What bothers you is the pictures that get triggered in your own head." Perusing a catalogue of his work in preparation for a meeting is a journey through disgust, fear, fascination and admiration to finally - almost - attachment. ...

While it is a painting, Epiphany is typical in its almost interchangeable use of photography and painting: both played their part in the achievement of the eventual, quasi-photographic image. He is a fine photographer, and his photographic portraits of Kilkenny children (enlarged to an enormous scale) form one strand of his festival exhibitions. The careful adaptation of existing imagery is another trait, and his references extend back through fine art history as well as history itself... ...

THE streets of the ancient county city of Kilkenny become a vast open air art gallery during this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival as the provocative work of Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein hangs his vast photo-realist paintings from buildings large and small including the metropolis's towering castle.
Helnwein's work, which has even led to government resignations in his native land, examines the ambivalence and hypocrisy with which unpleasant truths about the past are now viewed by society. ...

A major controversy has erupted over plans to hang huge paintings outside City Hall during the Kilkenny Arts Festival. Examples of the paintings to be displayed were shown to members of Kilkenny Corporation on Monday night and it sparked uproar in the chamber.
Cllr Paul Cuddihy rose to his feet and said that the city would be seen to be promoting the people responsible for the Second World War and the Holocaust if paintings like the one handed out at the meeting were allowed to be displayed outside City Hall.
He was referring to a controversial picture by Gottfried Helnwein, the internationally acclaimed Austrian artist who wants to display his work in the city during the Arts Festival. Arts Minister, Sile de Valera had already given the green light to hang some of his latest pieces from the front of Kilkenny Castle. ...

A former mayor of the city, Mr. Paul Cuddihy, objected to a proposal to display one of the images on the City Hall after it was shown to members of Kilkenny Corporation on Monday night. After visiting the artist at his home in Co.Tipperary, however, the Fine Gael councillor said Mr. Helnwein was an "astonishinlgy good" artist whose works would have a "huge visual impact" on next month's festival. ...

...

...

...

One piece of public art he did in 1988 - funded fully by himself, after he failed to raise sponsorship - commemorated the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht. "Again, what amazed me was that nobody talked about it - and yet that was when the horror really started."

"I wanted to do it in front of the Dome in Cologne, but the City prevented it. But there was this little strip of land which belonged to the railways, and a guy who worked there said, 'go ahead'. I didn't want to use these historic photographs which are used too often - those mountains of corpses mean nothing anymore - so I used four metre high children's faces. I photographed children from the area, foreign children, German children, Jews, anything." Mounted in a long billboard line, after the huge word "Selection", the children's faces were powdered in a deathly, bruised way, many with their eyes closed. That may sound subtle, but in the context of muted German Holocaust memorials, it was like a slap in the face. Despite CCTV video-cameras, someone painstakingly sliced the throats of every single child-portrait. ...

...

...

Project Arts Centre ...