August 17th, 2001
Irish Times
Feast of a festival
If you are a tourist whose arrival coincides with the festival, so much the better. Or worse, that is, should you want to take that defining photograph of one of Ireland's great castles and find it obscured by the massive, football pitch-size images by Gottfried Helnwein, whose work you may or may not like. "I don't give a damn what the hell it's supposed to be saying," announced an exasperated North American with a complicated-looking camera to the tiny woman at his side, "who in their right could justify poster art on an historic building smack dab in the tourist season or at any goddamn time." Some people appear to like the pictures of the local children. For others, the images are dismissed as "variations of Benetton-style advertising". Some women disapprove of the fact that the young girl's eyes are wearing eye make-up. A couple weren't happy about the children having their eyes closed, "It's, um, suggestive."