Orla Barry - a Tear for a Glass of Water
Orla Barry is an Irish artist, born in Wexford in 1969. She works with a variety of different media, including video, performance, text, and sound. Her work is largely centred around language and themes of autobiography and storytelling. She often combines narratives in a disjointed fashion, and utilises methods such as diaries, to create a fictitious reality. There is a strong focus on the visual displacement and deconstruction of language in her work, in a manner that is quite playful. In ‘A Tear for a Glass of Water’, 1997-1999, Barry presents a video of a woman acting out the role of a storyteller. The woman performs a fragmented monologue. We get the impression that she is rehearsing for somebody. In an interview with Katy Deepwell, Barry says “She’s practicing what she wants to say for years, but the person she wants to tell it to never shows up, is dead, estranged, or she just never gets around to actually telling them.” This rehearsal manner in which the woman is performing is relative to the feminine experience – constantly practicing performing so that you may be perceived in the best light possible. It did make me wonder if this work would be entirely different if it was a man rehearsing.
*absurdity and rehearsal*
