Deeply rooted in her activity as a shepherd and her flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep flock on her farm in Wexford, Orla Barry’s work offers a singular and comprehensive reflection on the living conditions of a rebellious, feminist “Punk Bo-Peep”, subverting the gendered stereotypes and patriarchal norms that shape the representations of the farming 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, centred 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 auto-fiction, and auto-ethnography, 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, selling and showing sheep, and bearing witness to the systemic sexism 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 learning^¹. 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.