Wexford-based artist and part-time farmer Orla Barry is currently showcasing ‘Spin Spin Scheherazade’ at the Crawford Gallery in association with Cork’s Midsummer Festival.
The live artwork by Orla, performed by Einat Tuchman, her longstanding collaborator, blends autofiction and oral history to create a humorous and passionate monologue.
The performance is rooted in an artistic form of barefoot anthropology, recounting her tenuous interactions with the land, farming, man, and animal.
It reflects on the culture of disconnection from the natural world and the boundaries of art and the rural every day.
Artist
A graduate of the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and the University of Ulster in Belfast, Orla went on to do postgraduate studies at De Ateliers art school in Amsterdam.
She lived in Holland and Belgium from 1991 to 2009 and is now a part-time lecturer at South East Technological University campus in Wexford, in the school of art and design.
The visual artist took up farming in 2011 as a way of understanding the system and integrating back into the community in which she grew up. Farming also provided a supplementary income.
It was the right decision, she said, because she has learned to much from a hands-on perspective.
“I can see ecology and nature from both sides of the field, so to speak. I see the massive trap farmers are in, in this global economy,” she said.
Orla draws on her background running a pedigree Lleyn sheep flock alongside her art practice, producing crossover artworks that blend text, narrative performance and visual art, which exist between the theatre and the gallery space.
A farm injury last year meant she had to sell most of her flock at Duncormick.
“I kept two ewes and 13 hoggets which I hope to be able to continue to breed and show. Recovery is slow but I am getting there,” she said.
A documentary about her life and work by Cara Holmes – ‘Notes From Sheepland’ – won best documentary at the Dublin International Film Festival in February. It offered a beguiling immersion into her life and the tapestry of profound connections she experiences with the animals, the land, the elements, words and language.
Sheep farming
When she is not busy on her art initiatives, Orla can be found rewilding part of the farm near the river, planting trees and tending to her small flock of Lleyn sheep.
“I find them a practical and quiet sheep, prolific and medium sized, easy for a woman to handle. I think they are the perfect replacement ewes for modern systems because of ease of management and good production traits,” she said.
“You can cross them or breed pure. There are very large flocks here and in the UK in which they will keep a nucleus flock of Lleyns to breed their own replacements and to breed replacements for other flocks.
“I think what I like about them most is that they are a very natural breed in his world of big muscular terminal breeds and they do the job and have more lambs.”
Art and shepherding go hand in hand for the Wexford woman, who relishes the chance to work in her native county while continuing her international career.
Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland’s Touring of Work Scheme, ‘Spin Spin Scheherazade’ has already been performed in Wexford Arts Centre. It end sits tour in the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios in association with Dublin Theatre Festival on October 5, 6 and 7.