20.07.2025
Sitting in the low slung seats of the Quatrelle, off road, beside a lime quarry, surrounded by sheep and broadcasting from inside the car via gaming app, Twitch, visual artist Orla Barry joined us this day last year for an interview. Orla Barry is a regarded shepherd with, ‘honest sheep’, a trusted farmer specialising in the Lleyn breed. Day to day, seasonally, year in year out, her dedication and care produces a naturally finished, hardy flock of content animals.
The flock are also part of Orla Barry’s captivating art practice where tales; autobiography, memoir, and critical theory glean insight and access to otherwise hidden worlds. From the visceral nature of the labour, the physically arduous and psychologically trying conditions of sheep husbandry, Barry’s multi-disciplinary art practice incorporates, fiction writing, performance, objects, sound and video in what might be called an autotheoretical distillation. A heavily engaged, often messy, muddy, bloody process…through livestock auctions, lambing, competitive dynamics, qualitative metrics, local yarns, where Barry weaves her experiences into witty fables and expansive installations.
Afterwards, along the R736, a road that’s part of Ireland's old Trunk and Link road system, we reflected on the interview; Orla’s way of creating these living fables where animals, plants, objects, humans are drawn together towards a revelation, life lesson of some kind, an epiphany. Orla had cited Maggie Nelson’s, The Argonauts as profoundly influential during the interview and this made sense given that both blend the line between the personal and the political to create something highly subjective, yet grounded in lived reality. Thought provoking and gas, you can watch the interview below.
We stayed on the R736 until Wellingtonbridge, originally Ballyowen, Baile Eoin where we crossed the Corock River onto the R733. At Ballyhack a ferry took us across the River Suir estuary where the Barrow, Suir, and Nore meet, to Passage East. There we met a man with Ireland’s one and only Renault 4 Pick-Up. The model was never officially manufactured in Ireland, but Noel Shanaghy from County Waterford had carried out his own conversion to create one. Noel had invited us to drive with him to visit his friends, a family who were also passionate about the restoration of Renault 4s. A large group gathered to see the Quatrelles parked alongside one another with great excitement and levity, tea and homemade cake, funny anecdotes, and when we were leaving they formed a guard of honour, go n-éirí an bóthar libh for our journey ahead.
