A documentary about the life and work of Wexford-based artist and farmer, Orla Barry, ‘Notes from Sheepland,’ opened yesterday, Friday, July 26, in selected cinemas around the country.
Keeping a flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep on a small corner of her father’s tillage farm at Duncormick, the ‘lipstick wearing, always swearing, no-nonsense artist and shepherd’ uses her work to explore the tensions of being an artist and eco-farmer in rural Ireland.
The sheep have slowed her art career but at the same time, caring for them has hugely inspired it.
She escapes the studio by going to the sheep, escapes the sheep by hiding in her studio.
‘Notes from Sheepland’ follows Orla, an outlier, as she floats between these worlds. It reflects upon the primal poetic and unpredictable bond she has with the natural world.
A graduate of the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and the University of Ulster, Belfast, Orla went on to do postgraduate studies at De Ateliers art school in Amsterdam, then moving to Belgium.
In recent years she has been lecturing part-time at SETU, taking a career break to concentrate for a while on the farm and her art practice in which she makes live performance and video installations, photography, text and sound works.
She took up farming in 2011 as a way of understanding the system and reintegrating into the community in which she grew up. Farming also became a supplementary income.
Her Lleyn flock is reduced, following an injury which was, she remarked, a steep learning curve.
The Wexford woman has had a busy few years, touring Cork, Dublin and Wexford with ‘Spin Spin Scheherazade’, a live artwork, performed by Einat Tuchman, which blends autofiction and oral history to create a humorous and passionate monologue.
She also took part in EVA International in Limerick and did a large solo show at the museum of contemporary art Hornu in Belgium.
Lots of new initiatives are planned. Orla is developing an idea for a fictional ‘sheep zoo’ project and a musical project based on the Carnsore anti-nuclear rallies of the late ’70s and early ’80s.
Meanwhile, ‘Spin Spin’ has been translated intro French and will play in Belgium in October and in Paris in 2025.
‘Notes from Sheepland’ won best documentary at the Irish Documentary Film Festival in 2023 and also won awards at other festivals.
It will open in the following cinemas on July 26: IFI, Temple Bar, Dublin; the Lighthouse, Smithfield, Dublin and Palas Cinema, Galway. It will be at QFT, Belfast from August 2 and the Triskel, Cork, from September 28.
A question and answer sessions of ‘Notes from Sheepland’ with Orla, director, Cara Holmes, hosted by Selina Guinness took place yesterday evening, July 26.
Arc cinema, Wexford will also have a question and answer session on July 31 with Orla and Cara, hosted by Wexford arts officer, Liz Burns after the 8:15p.m screening.
‘Notes from Sheepland’ will also tour the country regionally, screening at cinemas, arts centres and film clubs.