Gerry Barry’s Incredible Land Art Installations Harmonize with the Irish Landscape

Working in the tradition of <a href="http://inhabitat.com/tag/land-art/" target="_blank">land art</a>, artist <a href="http://gerrybarrylandartworks.wordpress.com" target="_blank">Gerry Barry</a> utilizes organic media to create epic installations on poetic landscapes across the Irish countryside. Barry’s installations often feature circular or crescent shapes, and they enhance the terrains upon which they are built. Using rocks, water, sand and landscaping, he creates ephemeral artworks that can last a day or a decade.

A key element, medium and influence in the artist’s work is water. Associated with purity and the source of life, Barry often <a href="http://inhabitat.com/evewright-creates-massive-sand-drawings-using-the-beach-as-a-canvas/" target="_blank">creates pieces in or around water.</a> Carefully selected rounded stones and rocks of varying size are arranged in a radius near shore lines.

As the tides naturally rise and decrease, the installations are consistently flooded, then revealed, making one installation have a fresh look each day.

Other water themed pieces are created with <a href="http://inhabitat.com/book-review-landart-new-mexico/halperin/" target="_blank">landscaping and digging</a>. Circular patterns and shallow troughs are dug in ring like pattern, filling with ground water and rain to give away the artist’s chosen pattern.

Because many of his <a href="http://inhabitat.com/cornelia-konrads-incredible-land-art-installations-hover-above-the-landscape/" target="_blank">land art </a>works are meant to be permanent, they are left to the mercy of the elements, decaying, aging, or slightly moving, depending on forces of wind, water and sun.

Like the principles of the land art movement, the installations are meant to coexist with the changes of nature, themselves changing to become an ever evolving work of art.

Gerry Berry’s installations <a href="http://inhabitat.com/walter-mason-uses-natures-gifts-to-create-striking-land-art/" target="_blank">harmonize with the nature</a>, rather than disrupt it. Many of his gorgeous pieces can still be found, some of them enduring the forces and nature and man since they were installed in the mid 1970s.