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Orla Barry
Deeply rooted in her activity as a shepherd and her pedigree Lleynsheep flock on her farm in Wexford, Orla Barry’s work offers a singular and comprehensive reflection on the living conditions of a rebellious and feminist “Bo-Peep punk”, subverting the gendered stereotypes and patriarchal norms that shape the representations of this milieu, either idealized or silenced. Attentive to the economy of the natural materials used in her work (wool, horn, felt, wood) and to the gestures of the operative chain that underpins the production of her works, Orla Barry highlights the relationships of solidarity, trust and care that she maintains on a daily basis with her “companion species”, but also of (inter-) dependence with the economic structures (auctions, competition) that condition their existences.
The exhibition will feature a selection of works by Orla Barry, centered around the performative installation Spin Spin Scheherazade. Composed of various modules, including a podium, printed texts on panels, sculptures and audio recordings, Spin Spin Scheherazade will be activated at several moments by performer and long-time collaborator Einat Tuchman. In a narrative combining autofiction, poems and personal anecdotes, the text looks back at the situations, obstacles and dilemmas that Orla Barry faced when she decided to turn to a pastoral life. Tracing the various stages in the cycle of breeding, selecting and selling sheep, and bearing witness to the systemic misogyny within predominantly male circles of sociability, these narratives are marked by a peculiar sensitivity to the world shaped by a form of mutualism, which philosopher Vinciane Despret and ecologist Michel Meuret have identified as the source and product of reciprocal learning¹. Through references to popular characters (Scheherazade, Rapunzel) and the polysemy of a language that thwarts all semantic fixation, Orla Barry explores our relationship to rurality and its vernacular cultures, while questioning our understanding of its social, political and ecological realities.
¹ Vinciane Despretand and Michel Meuret, Composer avec les moutons. Lorsque les brebis apprennent à leurs bergers à leur apprendre, Avignon: Éditions Cardère, 2016.
Orla Barry
Orla Barry, artist Orla Barry (Ireland, 1969) is both an artist and a shepherdess. She teaches sculpture and performance at Carlow Institute of Technology. After living in Brussels for 16 years, she decided to move to her father’s farm in rural Wexford where, alongside her artistic activity, she keeps a flock of Lleyn sheep. Through performances and video and sound installations, her work deals with the physicality and poetics of oral language, drawing on the correspondences and tensions between the art practice and the farming environment in rural Ireland. Drawing on non-linear narratives imbued with research methodologies akin to autoethnography, her work addresses the history and semantics of words through an approach to writing and speaking that aims fora physical and embodied understanding of language as a visual form.
Her work has recently been shown in international exhibitions including MAC’s Grand Hornu (2024), Mu.Zee in Ostend (2019), Quetzal Art Centre (2017), Mothers Tankstation (2014), Museu Bernardo in Lisbon (2011), Irish Museum of Modern Art (2006), Camden Arts Centre in London (2005), W139 in Amsterdam (2005), S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2005), Argos (2002). Her performances have been presented as part of Performatik 17: The Brussels Biennial of Performance Art at Argos (2017), the WoWmen Festival KAAI (2020) and Playground at the M-Museum in Leuven (2019).
“Spin Spin Scheherazade” performance at 7 pm
Performance with Elinat Tuchman
Performance with Elinat Tuchman