For Notes from Sheepland, a new Reel Art/Arts Council film coming to Irish cinemas this month, filmmaker Cara Holmes and artist and shepherd Orla Barry embarked on a collaboration together, to follow Orla and her beloved flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep for a year.
Cara introduces Notes from Sheepland below...
It was through researching the history of women in farming in Ireland that I was introduced to Orla Barry, an artist and shepherd, an outlier floating between worlds. Identity and where we find ourselves in the world is something that I consistently come back to explore in film.
As queer artists living in Ireland, we understand the in-between, the complexities of identity and belonging. I wanted this film to reflect Orla's life through the telling of her own story, in her own words.
Orla’s book Shaved Rapunzel, Scheherazade and the Shearling Ram from Arcady inspired the film. The book is filled with stories and performance texts recounting her experiences as she left the city and returned to her pastoral roots, reborn as a hybrid: a farmer-artist.
I knew very little about sheep farming before I met Orla, but I quickly found myself knee deep in sheep. Through phone call after phone call my understanding of the work involved and the emotional connection one human can have with their animals deepened.
Orla, a self-confessed ovine addict, began to send me voice notes about her life on her farm and the lives of the pedigree sheep; Elsey, The Log, Patsy, Iris and Ivy, to name only a few. I learned about her artistic work and how it deals with the physicality and poetics of oral language drawing on the tensions between being an artist and a shepherd in rural Ireland.
‘The Sheep have slowed my art career but at the same caring for them has hugely inspired it. I escape the studio by going to the sheep, escape the sheep by hiding in my studio, escaping one world to be free in another.’ - Orla Barry
I was interested in the landscape and the gritty inner workings of the farm, the hard labour, the seasonal challenges, what it takes for this shepherd-artist to keep going, year after year. How she balances her inner creative spirit, yet she is trapped geographically and tied into the sheep calendar.
A celebration of the rituals and values of farming life, we see this world from Orla’s unique vantage point. From art seminars, sheep discussion groups, exhibitions, farm inspections, lambing in April and shearing in June to the day of reckoning when the country’s top pedigree sheep make their way to The Tullamore Show, a headline event in the pedigree sheep year. It is both friendly and competitive, everyone is there to win the red rosette. The aesthetics and the beauty of an animal. The link between sheep and artwork is always present.
The film began in the pandemic where many people were questioning the quality of their lives. It provoked many questions in me. Have we lost our relationship to nature ? What should we truly value as a society? Will the sheep help us to realise the errors of our ways?
Through a chaotic and unpredictable year of following sheep and their shepherd, I also got to spend many hours standing in the middle of a field, staring into the eyes of sheep. It’s quietly profound.
Notes from Sheepland is released in selected cinemas nationwide from July 26th 2024.
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