Notes from Sheepland

The film will be followed by an optional short guided meditation by Heartfulness Meditation Ireland.

Orla Barry is a self-confessed sheep addict. She is a decade in sheep farming, she’s still wondering what possessed her to start but yet she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Orla lived in Brussels for 16 years and now lives and works in South East Ireland where she runs a flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep. Her work deals with the tensions of being an artist and an eco- farmer in rural Ireland. The Sheep have slowed her art career but at the same, 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.

Director: Cara Holmes 70 mins, Ireland, 2023, F-Rated