Gottfried Helnwein’s imagery is confrontational but this provocation is ultimately designed to jolt us from complacency writes Mic Moroney
Essentially a hyperrealist graphic artist of quite extraordinary facility, Gottfried Helnwein’s huge PhotoreaJist canvases are awash with references to religious Renaissance paintings, the dark allure of Nazi imagery and his background in the ruins of post-war Vienna. His strategy is often of deliberate shock and provocation, from his earliest extreme watercolours of doll-like, wounded children with their hare-lips and facial disfigurements, which prompted cartoonist Robert Crumb to call him as ‘a very fine artist and one sick mother—er.’
Susan Rogers visits woodturner Liam Flynn at his County Limerick studio
William Laffan previews the exhibition ‘Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design 1690-1840′ which opens at the Art Institute of Chicago in March
In his design for the new Coast Guard Station in Doolin, County Clare, Dominic Stevens has discovered his architecture of the Burren; an architecture of abstract rocks, describing the material nature of place, writes Steve Larkin