Work addressing farming, feminism, farming practices and being an artist in rural Ireland is the focus of this group exhibition at STAC, drawing on each artist’s farming background.  In the case of Barry, owner of a flock of pedigree Lleyn sheep, the art is intrinsic. Here she asks herself, ‘Am I an artist-farmer, or a farmer artist?’ as she questions her future as either, both, or making the choice between the two. 

Laura Fitzgerald has long sited anxieties and ambitions about her practice in farming terms, ‘ploughing up’ her practice in an earlier work before recently settling in rural Kerry, where she identifies a local mountain as a suitable submission for the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in her witty video piece, ‘A Mountain For Venice’. 

This levity is tempered by  emerging artist Chloe McKeown’s clinical and insightful exploration of interactions between human and non-human domestic animals, their breeding, sale and management pared back to the particulars with unsettling effect.

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