After months of hard work artist Guido Van Helten has put the finishing touches on his silo artworks in Portland this week.
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“It’s great that the paintings opened the doors to a place that has been closed up for so long in an exciting and fun way to give the place a new life,” Mr Van-Helten said.
The project, which has been fully sponsored by AWJ Civil, has become a tourist attraction with 10,000 people estimated to have visited throughout the project.
“I was very excited to work with AWJ as they have taken the risk to put the money into such a large scale arts project without support,” he said.
“Often when I paint it is a shared budget with the government, but being privately sponsored by a family run organisation has been amazing.”
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Managing Director of AWJ Civil Martin O’Connell said now they have been able to achieve early activation, the company was looking forward to opening more of the site up in the coming months.
“We were very lucky to have secured Guido to paint the silos on the site, and we are absolutely blown away by what he has created,” Mr O’Connell said.
Despite the artwork featuring specific people, Mr Van-Helten said it was representative of all the workers from the cement works and marks a point in time where the site was transitioning to something new.
“I have had a great time with all the community that have come down and helped out or just had a chat with me whilst I have been working on this project,” he said.
Mr Van-Helten will now embark on a trip to LaGuardia, Spain to judge an art competition before going to America where he will be straight into more work in the mid-west.
It’s a beautiful time of year in Portland and some of the seasonal changes I have seen have influenced the subtle colouring in the painting.
- Guido Van Helten
The Foundations site will be open from 10am until 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays only for close up viewing.
