Life on farm inspires Orla’s work
WEXFORD woman Orla Barry is an artist and a sheep farmer. Yes, that’s right. Having lived and created in Brussels for 16 years, she runs a flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep on her father’s farm in Duncormick.
Art and farming may seem like odd bedfellows but for Orla it’s a combination that works well as she takes inspiration from rural existence to produce live performances and video and sound installations. She also lectures at the Wexford Campus School of Art and Design of Carlow IT.
Her work has been performed and shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, SMAK (Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent) and the Tate Modern in London and she has won awards at agricultural shows in Clonmel and Tullamore and a champion prize in the pedigree sales in Roscrea for the excellence of her sheep.
The former Rathangan national school pupil and Ursuline Convent boarder studied art at the University of Ulster in Belfast and De Atliers in Amsterdam,
A daughter of Michael and Kathleen Barry, the busy shepherd has just finished a run of live performances and a video and installation exhibition of her latest artistic work Breaking Rainbows in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios during the Dublin Theatre Festival and received an Arts Council award to tour it next year to venues in Ireland including Wexford Arts Centre, and in Brussels at the Kaai Theatre and Argos Centre for Arts and Media.
Breaking Windows interweaves live performances by two actors Derrick Devine and Einat Tuchman in the midst of 300 kg of wool produced on Barry’s farm last year. The actors deliver different spoken pieces chosen by the audience from a selection of options on topics concerned with the environment, the weather, the artist’s personal experience of farming, selling sheep at marts and the challenge of integrating farming with art.
In one humorous piece, Einat performs a hilarious monologue about the modern obsession with imported exotic health foods which are a far cry from the local produce of parsnips, turnips, carrots and potatoes. A theme running through most of her recent work is the human disconnection from the natural environment.
Breaking Rainbows explores the boundaries between art and life using the relationship between wo/man and animal and the cannibalistic and symbiotic tension between Orla the artist and Orla the sheep farmer to reflect on the primal and unpredictable bond we have with the natural world. Presented as a live performance and video installation, it is made up of a series of endearing, humorous and challenging vignettes which take the audience on a journey into the land of shepherding from the realm of sheep farming traditions, ancient Greek shepherd’s singing competitions, contemporary consumerism and gender roles to the intimate relationship of caring for a sheep about to give birth.
It also examines language, how we use it and the nature of storytelling as transferred through generations. The installations include a series of curtains covered in text.
A previous Barry work Mountain was shown at the East London Gallery while another, The Scavenger’s Daughters was exhibited at the Tate Modern. Breaking Rainbows is supported by an Arts Council Touring and Dissemination of Work Award.
It will travel to Brussels next March and to the Crawford Gallery in Cork in June before being shown at Wexford Arts Centre during Wexford Festival Opera next year.