Visual artist Ornagh told David Hennessy about her virtual reality show The Ode Islands which she is about to bring to Edinburgh for her Fringe debut.
Hastings- based visual artist from Clontarf Ornagh blends live performance with responsive virtual reality.
She is about to bring the one-woman show The Ode Islands to Edinburgh for her Fringe Festival debut.
The Ode Islands unfolds in a fully digital environment.
At its centre is a woman caught in a storm and cast adrift across a chain of surreal islands—each representing a different facet of her identity, from domestic roles to sexuality, gender, and body image.
With a supporting cast of digital characters also performed by Ornagh, the piece is an exploration of memory, myth, and the boundaries of self.
Ornagh is a self-taught artist whose work explores themes of political and social issues, like societal expectations of gender and sexual diversity, through extended reality (XR) art.
Her work has been showcased internationally, from the Turner Gallery to exhibitions in Lisbon, Paris, and Milan.
In 2015, she founded The Nave Collective to use art for social change, and in 2021, she launched Ornagh XR Studios, merging digital and physical worlds through surreal, multi-sensory performances and installations.
Where did The Ode Islands come from?
“This is actually a retrospective of works that I’ve been creating for a very long time.
“I tend to take something that’s going on in my life and I’ll use that to create a virtual reality experience.
“I’ve been creating these experiences now for two and a half years and because they’re based on my own life, they’re linking narratives.
“I got an opportunity to headline an arts festival and they said to me, ‘Would you have something that you can perform?’
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I can actually show how these projects link together’, and instead of using virtual reality experiences that you see inside the headset, use those environments as backdrops and create a stage show.
“I did that and they said, ‘I think this could be really cool for the Fringe. Anthony at the Pleasance might want to hear about this’.
“I pitched it to him and he just thought it was great.
“And then he gave me the opportunity to show it at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre for the run of the Fringe.
“I’m really excited to show a culmination of all my hard work.
“I think VR is not as accessible whereas everyone can understand a play so it’s really exciting that people will be able to see the work who wouldn’t maybe normally come and see it.
“I’m really looking forward to that.”
Tell us a bit about these virtual reality worlds you create..
“I tend to pick a theme that’s relevant to me.
“A lot of my work is around consciousness and addiction and mental health and sexuality.
“You’ll put on a headset and essentially there’s an entire world that’s been created all around you so rather than a flat artwork, you’re seeing art in 360 all around you.
“And you can use the controllers to walk through these environments and interact with characters and scale things and pick up things and hear little sound bites or see videos.
“Each environment has its own story related to the theme.”
Tell us more about the themes..
“I think it’s just an exploration of what it is to be a person.
“As a female born person, what that is in the world in the context of societal pressures and patriarchy and exploring that at a deeper level.
“This whole piece is really a reflection of my life.
“I left quite a stagnant situation and I went out to find who I was.
“I think that’s a common story for everyone who’s been rebuilding themselves in one way that you don’t really know where to start.
“These are the type of things that I explored to try and build myself into the person that I am now, build my confidence, learn who I am.
“Those were important themes in the journey that I went on over those years to accepting who I was and understanding who I was and that’s very much reflected in the artwork.
“They see a very surrealist version of that but the actual exploration is a very human experience.”
When did you know you wanted to pursue art and performing?
“I started dancing from when I was three.
“I travelled back and forth from the UK to Ireland in my youth.
“I spent up to junior infants in Ireland and I went two years to London, two years back over to Ireland, then two years to Manchester.
“I actually went to six schools across the UK and Ireland.
“I did dancing and drama as well.
“When I was in Ireland, I went to the Gaiety School of Acting and I was in Dublin Youth Theatre.
“And I was on a competitive dance team for years doing hip hop dancing.
“Creativity was always there.
“I always was good at art.
“I suppose I wasn’t great at many subjects you’re supposed to be good at but I was good at art and dancing and drama.
“I always enjoyed that and was deeply into that.
“The past 15 years I’ve been developing immersive experiences and exhibitions and layered experiences where you mix media of video and live performance that feels immersive.
“It’s definitely spawned from my theatre experience though I went on a very experimental route and now feel like I’m going back a little bit more to my younger training and my younger years.”
Was moving so much between England and Ireland difficult? Was it hard having to start all over again with each move?
“I actually always kind of liked the challenge.
“I’m very social.
“I don’t know whether that came from moving so much but I always loved variety.
“Maybe that’s why I am the way I am today always wanting to do so many artistic mediums and doing new things and bigger things and challenge myself.
“I always was trained to kind of move around but I loved it.
“I loved the challenge of it and it didn’t bother me really to move.
“It was how I grew up so it was what I was used to.
“I think I learned a lot about people and different types of people.
“I went to one private school, that was probably the most challenging one because it was quite different from what I’d been used to but even that was a learning experience.
“I feel like it’s really good in life to be able to speak to lots of different people.
“I think we have that quality anyway.
“As Irish people we’re very open and friendly and very easy to talk to and down to earth.
“I think that’s what people really like about us and that’s what I love about that calling card of being Irish.
“Especially in the UK, people love it.
“It was a great learning lesson in life about being open minded to lots of different people.
“I think it’s definitely had an influence on who I am now and the crazy kind of worlds I’ve created.”
Would it also be where your interest in subjects like consciousness and mental health come from as it must have been isolating at times?
“I’m not one to shy away from being honest that I’ve had struggles and that I’ve had to work on myself to get to who I am.
“I try to reflect that in the work as much as possible, as much vulnerability as I can.
“I’ve definitely had moments in my life, as we all have, where we suffer and I think it’s nice to be able to tell people there’s different supports for that.
“Sometimes it’s just breathing, you know?
“A lot of my work is reflective of the more challenging moments I’ve gone through.
“My art is my release.
“It’s a positive outlet.
“When I suffered with anxiety, I did CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) and I would put that in the work and just share these ways in which it’s okay to talk about struggles and shameless discussion of struggles.
“I think it’s really important.
“Some of these topics are taboo and they’re very relevant to what lots of kids today and lots of people grown ups adults are also experiencing.
“I like to clear my own shame by expressing it through my work and in that process, I feel a bit more free and a bit more fearless.
“Every single thing you see in the work is my true experience.
“The first island where the piece begins is a dramatised version of my old life where I’m trapped in a stagnant life as a 1950s housewife serving a man.
“I’m trapped and isolated.
“She breaks free of that and she travels into a storm and that storm reflects some of the negative things that she was experiencing in that house: Struggles with mental health, struggles with pressures of society and how she was supposed to be acting as a woman, and addiction.
“She goes through a storm where she really has to face all of that and she washes up on shore then of a new island.
“That’s when in my life I ran away and I started again.
“I built myself up from scratch and I explored a lot of the things that I couldn’t explore when I was in my old life.
“Every part of the show is about something that I’ve been through and it’s also not about the people that have hurt me, it’s really about my own journey.
“It’s not a dig at anyone.
“It’s just my own experience so there’s nothing in this piece that isn’t vulnerable to me.
“This show is very much a culmination of the entire story put together in a more linear hero’s journey of how someone can get through turmoil and restart again.
“That is what I’m trying to hopefully connect with people in the show.
“Even if they struggle with the visuals or the tech, I think we can all connect to feeling the struggle of being trapped in something and starting again and maybe it can inspire people in some way.
“It’s just a reflection so if I can touch anyone in any way, that would be a job well done.”
Can you tell us a bit about the different roles you play?
“There’s a few different characters.
“In the first scene I’m acting as the mannequin man who’s kind of a soulless, empty man that lives with me in my house.
“Then there’s my Hippokiss character who’s my saviour, companion.
“He’s my right hand man in the show who helps give me purpose and direction.
“There’s giant bull men called the GLDs who have an underground club where the girl goes and explores down there, so I get to be big beasts and I get to dance as them and also as myself.
“But then I’m also a Shaperson which is kind of a like a spiritual healer, so very surrealist characters.
“They all have their own personalities.
“They all have their own purpose in the story to kind of get the girl to look at life differently.
“They all represent something in my journey in a very abstract kind of way.”
You mentioned escaping a stagnant situation and the show depicts a 1950s housewife. Was it a domestic situation you were stuck in?
“I think I was in just quite a normal lifestyle.
“It’s not so much about the specifics of that situation.
“It was everything that I was doing: My job, my routine.
“Then COVID happened.
“I was just stuck inside the location I was living.
“It was a lovely life but it wasn’t the life that I wanted to live.
“It was nothing bad about anyone that I shared that life with.
“It was just the spark for the show, for the freedom journey.
“It’s very much not to look back and be hard on myself for the life that I used to live, it’s more about setting the scene of what gave me the catalyst for this wider journey.
“In the show I’m focused on the journey of what happens to her when she takes a risk so the show is very briefly only in the old life, just to give context. The rest of it is really about who you become when you completely leave everything of an old life and you step into the unknown.
“That is really what the show and what the works have been about.”
Something we haven’t spoken about an awful lot, but features in your work, is addiction. Is that something you’ve seen in your own story?
“Yeah, I’ve definitely worked on my own habits hard over the years and I feel like that’s reflected in the show.
“That was one of the reasons why I left my old life.
“Being from Ireland, it was always acceptable to have a few drinks.
“When people maybe have harder times, that can raise its head in a more negative way and that’s something that I had struggled with when I was younger.
“I wasn’t an addict as such but I think you don’t have to be an addict to have problems at different stages.
“I like to be open about that and what I’ve been through and it allows me to drop shame by just being honest about it.
“That’s definitely something that’s present in the scene and that’s something I want to actually do more virtual reality works on in the future.
“I think it’s really good to share those things and not pretend that you’re perfect, I’m certainly not.”
It will be interesting to see what reactions you get..
“People have a reaction to technology.
“It never gets old seeing people’s reactions to it when they actually step in.
“I represent a gin brand in Hastings called Hastings Gin and I do work for them with AIs and the videos get a lot of traction so therefore we get trolling on them about the AIs.
“There’s so much fear out there around AI at the moment and some of it understandable but I feel like the show is a great reflection of how different AIs can be used in a positive way for creativity.
“Yes, there may be negative implications but I think there was also negative implications with the internet and when the camera came along.
“With these innovative strides, people get very scared.
“I’ve been on the receiving end of negative feedback about AI.
“This show uses tonnes of AI and it’s a hell of a lot of work.
“I wouldn’t be able to do a show like this without AI.
“I think it’s a really cool message to show how creative you can be using these tools.
“No doubt people will come for that and people will be distracted by that and maybe miss the deeper message within the story.
“I don’t really care what people say.
“I’m doing something very niche and avant garde and I’m using it in a really creative way that I’m proud of.
“I can’t really listen to negativity around that.
“I think anyone who’s ever taken big risks and done experimental art forms have always had to deal with a lot of naysayers and getting negative feedback.
“I think that’s just part of being an artist and putting yourself out there.
“They have fears about what it’s doing for people losing jobs and all of that which are valid in some instances but I’m just using it to make art with and I’m enjoying the process of that.”
The Ode Islands is at Pleasance, Edinburgh 31 July- 16 August. www.pleasance.co.uk.
For more information about Ornagh, click here.
