The Intersection of Art and Technology: A Conversation with Ornagh, Pioneering XR Artist
Ornagh blends 3D, real-world elements, drag-inspired looks, scrapbooking, video art, and VR assets to create immersive XR experiences, exploring the concept of freedom.
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Ornagh, Photo: Toby Shaw
Ornagh is a self-taught, Irish-born artist, who began developing creative work on moving to London in 2009. She has acquired recognition for her bold, unapologetic works on themes of body politics, consumerism, and mental health. In 2016 she founded The Nave Art Collective, with a mission of using art as a vehicle for social change.
Since 2021, Ornagh delves into XR (extended reality), using 3D scanning, VR installation, and motion capture for surreal environments with playful yet unsettling characters. In January 2023, she toured the UK with her VR creation 'Ode to Him,' showcased at galleries like The Towner Gallery and Canterbury Christ Church University.
He Loves Me, Mixed Media Gloss Paper Print: VR painting, photogrammetry, and VR Photography, Ornagh, Photo: Courtesy of the artist Ornagh.
Razvan Chiorean: Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you got started as an artist?
Ornagh: I've always been creative since I was a child. I grew up immersed in art, dancing and drama but it wasn’t until I moved to the UK in 2009, aged 21, that I started creating my first layered experiences–hosting themed nights that blended live music, fashion and prerecorded video art with characters and stories that would pop up during the events, as actors or projections.
Over the following few years I continued to play with combining mediums to create immersive experiences, while delving a bit deeper into the tech and underground art scenes. These subcultures helped me develop a clear sense of the type of creative I aspired to be and find my artistic voice. I found my home and my tribe here. Attending meetups at Google Campus and BBC Labs to take day courses in coding, I learned how to develop and pitch my ideas, while creating art that addressed topics I cared deeply about: consumerism, body politics and mental health.
In 2016, I launched my own art collective, The Nave, with other creatives who question the effects of consumer culture on human beings and our environment, with a mission to inspire others to collaborate and take action. We’ve achieved a lot over the years, touring exhibitions around the UK and Europe, and brought attention to numerous causes.
Today, while still guiding and steering the collective, my main focus is my own practice. In 2020, my focus was on creating video art from drag performances, and then I discovered XR (Extended Reality), which took me on an adventure that changed my path entirely.
RC: What mediums do you prefer to work with and why?
O: As a conceptual artist, the message is the most important part for me so I work with a variety of different mediums. The idea comes to me first– it could be around anything, from an installation, to an environment, or a character. From there, I’ll know what medium I need to use to get started on the idea. Since starting in XR, I’ve honed my focus on two key aspects VR (Virtual Reality) and MR (Mixed Reality) and use a variety of cutting-edge mediums, including 3D scanning to transfer real world objects or people into VR. I also do VR painting, and installation building using the VR headset and controllers to create three dimensional art. You can paint anything: characters, installations, even full environments and worlds.
I also utilise motion-capture performance, a method by which I film myself or other performers dancing or acting, and use the video from these sessions to animate my virtual characters. I create and record sound to accompany the visuals, to enhance the realism and depth of my avatars, and the worlds they inhabit. I’ve always been a multi-passionate creative and my love for architecture, design, music, and fashion finds its perfect expression in this space. That's why I love it so much - I get to do it all!
9 Death did us part, Ornagh
RC: What themes or ideas do you explore in your work?
O: Freedom. Most of my work explores freedom in one way or another and probably always will. In this phase, my interest is in consciousness, addiction and mental health. I always strive to share from personal experience because I believe that's the most powerful form of expression. I’ve found when you’re brave enough to share your own vulnerabilities, it can be a catalyst for others to face their fears, and feel less shame and isolation.
At the moment I'm working on an exhibition called ‘Ode to Her’. It explores female empowerment, through a voyage to claim feminine freedom. As our society undervalues feminine energies I, like so many others, have been indoctrinated to lead with my masculine energy, and it felt important to me that I embrace a phase of vulnerability guided by feminine energy.
I went back to my youth to explore shame arising from societal pressures about how we “should” look and behave. Delving into personal choices and experiences I went through, I’m aiming to redirect the narrative, and claim back the parts of myself that might not be deemed conventionally beautiful and put them centre-stage in this art experience.
Fostering my own sense of beauty, and in turn personal freedom, in this way I hope this experience will inspire others to love the parts of themselves they have been too critical of, and contemplate on where that narrative comes from.
Doing this work I had to claim the feminine in myself, and understand the importance of being able to lean into this energy. I had to allow and feel all of my emotions. I had to cry, and be angry. Before embarking on this project, even using emotional language would have been difficult for me. There is an underlying current, a requirement of modesty about your body and you grow up talking about emotions and body parts as gross, shameful or uncomfortable. This can be disempowering, especially for women. Everyone should feel beautiful for their unique qualities, that make them who they are, and be empowered to express happiness in their own unique way.
Death Did Us Part, Mixed Media Gloss Paper Print: VR painting, photogrammetry, and VR Photography, Ornagh, Photo: Courtesy of the artist Ornagh
RC: Can you describe your artistic process, from inspiration to finished product?
O: I start by getting into the creative state, if I’m not there already. That might be through meditating, freewriting, listening to music, or working out. I open up to ideas that come to me in the form of visuals, usually as characters interacting in a space. I see quite clearly what they look like, what they are wearing, and I usually have a sense of the message they are trying to convey. I then develop these ideas by freewriting more about them.
Freewriting is a technique of writing as fast as possible without any need to stop for punctuation or grammar, for a preset time, or preset number of pages. When you get blocked, you just write nonsense until ideas start to flow again. The idea is to get out of your thinking mind, to channel the creative energy that lies beyond the compulsive, conditioned, and reactive top layer of thought. It’s the practice I’ve used longest in my creative life.
As I write, I place an arrow beside any idea I think worth further attention and I upload these ideas to Trello boards, where I organise them under the exhibition or character they relate to. It's always clear where an idea should sit because of its theme. As I get more ideas, I add to them over time. I am currently working on developing about seven exhibitions concurrently in this way, each exploring a different theme, but underpinned by the overall theme of freedom. References are a big part of my process. I get visual references from instagram, Pinterest, and my own art books.
My art book collection is my pride and joy, incredibly special to me. I also have a scrapbook collection I use for references, taking parts of my own history as images to use within the virtual world.
I use AI to develop storyboards, and written documents to share the ideas with my team and collaborators. Depending on the project I will paint in VR, dance and perform in motion capture, and scan in objects. I use a variety of softwares for this: Polycam, Rokoko, Blender, and Gravity Sketch. When the assets are created, it’s time for the world building stage. I use softwares like Unreal Engine and Unity to pull the assets into an environment and lay them out. I sometimes need assistance with the more hardcore programming of the environment.
I am currently working with mixed reality where I film myself performing on a green screen, using my VR environments as backdrop. This requires me to again find references, write dialogues, and source looks. I get a lot of costumes from Teddy Tinkers, a great local business with great affordable hire costs. (If you say Ornagh sent you, you can get a discount). On the day of shooting, I will meet my team and usually my partner in mixed reality video, Tom, and I will do a brief of the day. Then filming begins. And after that, the edits. It’s a lengthy process, with many different aspects, but this is the nature of art in tech!
A New World , 2024, Ornagh
RC: Who are some of your biggest influences and inspirations?
O: Niki de Saint Phalle. From the moment I stepped into her tarot garden in Italy, it just blew me away. She started off in modeling and creating performance art, using herself as the tool to tell her story. She was shooting a gun at a wall. When the bullet hit the wall it would reveal multicoloured paint that dripped out like blood. People were shocked in the 1960s by this powerful woman creating art in this unique way, and using a gun associated so heavily with masculinity. She was always breaking ideals of what people thought she could be, going from being a model to performance artist, then to installation artist.
She lived and died in her art. Her kitchen was in a breast, inside of one of her giant sculptures, her bed in another. Any money she made went back into her tarot garden sculpture park. My dream is to create an XR version of an art park like hers, in Hastings. I think it's so inspiring how she took care of all the community surrounding her. Generations on, the same family lines of local people are still working on her tarot garden, with techniques passed down by their ancestors.
I was introduced to mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. This fundamentally shaped my beliefs as a person which you can see in the themes of my work. Without his influence I don’t think I would have had the bravery or tools to become the artist I am today.
Surrealism is a huge influence on me. I like to think I’d have been part of that movement if I’d lived back then. Working with the mind and the uncanny, challenging norms and values in search of freedom: all of this is how and why I create also. They were political artists and they worked with freewriting techniques. The more I learn of them over time the more I am drawn to the movement, and the more I take inspiration from their works.
Rachel McClean I admire her work on characterisation. She’s been doing her version of female drag since the early noughties, and she embraces so many mediums–installation, drag, animation, tapestry. I love artists who fearlessly say, “Yes! I'm going to do it all.” I was introduced to mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. This fundamentally shaped my beliefs as a person which you can see in the themes of my work. Without his influence I don’t think I would have had the bravery or tools to become the artist I am today.
I also love Paul McCarthy's installation work, the vulgarity and comedy that somehow still retains a high-end feel and Lee Bul’s use of mirror to interrogate the self. I've watched every RuPaul drag race and I spend a lot of time on East London dance floors at queer techno nights, where some of the most stunning creatures and most creative fashion looks reside. Packed with the fearless, the fabulous, the freaky, these dancefloors feel like acceptance, feel like home, to me. And lastly, my talented friends, I am beyond blessed to be surrounded by so many artists who never stop inspiring me with their work but also with their energy, just being their unique selves.
Ornagh, Photo: Toby Shaw
RC: What has been your proudest moment as an artist so far?
O: There have been many over the past decade. One of my proudest is Surgery Slave, an exhibition around plastic surgery, personal experience, and mass media’s influence on women's body image. It was the first exhibition I held that really captured all of my creative influences: it was immersive, combined digital and live performances, underground art and high art, and asked attendees to get involved by dressing to the theme. I created video art that told a story in advance that then continued on at the exhibition with the same moving characters depicted in the artworks interacting with the audience. It showed the full realm of my influences at the time, including other artists I respected, and it was beautiful to see how the theme resonated with so many people.
More recently, I loved showing my work at the Towner gallery in Eastbourne for the Hi3 Network creative showcase, as I was asked to sit on a panel and talk about my XR journey and show my exhibition 'Ode to Him’ in VR. When I moved to London ten years ago, I attended white wall galleries in Mayfair and around central London every week with my Mam. These big, beautiful venues dedicated to just art, where the architecture and art has space to breathe, always make me feel euphoric, like a meditation. The Towner is just such a beautiful space. It felt like a big mountain climbed to show my work in a space like that, and I was super proud.
I'm really proud of my background in underground arts and my love of a beautiful high art space. I love the contradiction, variety and never being pinned down as one type of person or artist. I'm proud of this too.
And I was equally proud to show my digital work recently at the Temporary Autonomous Artists Exhibition (TAA), which is the complete opposite vibe. Very underground, TAA has been running for 20 years, held in a squatted building and run by a different team each time. They take over a building for a week, and lay out floors and floors of political and experimental art for people to enjoy. The police come but never shut it down, as it’s truly an amazing space. I feel so blessed to have stumbled on this community that I might never known was there, and to be back with my Collective community and all my friends, and showing all these new digital mediums we have been working with years at TAA felt like a full-circle moment, seeing all we have achieved together back in the community where we started. I will always try to do this exhibition.
RC: How do you think your work reflects your local culture or community?
O: The reason I moved to Hastings was because of the whole artist vibe, it's so full of creative people. I only meant to stay for six weeks but I never left–I got the Hasting curse as the locals say! Coming down for the first time, I saw a guy wearing a pink collar and nappy and holding a briefcase, strutting down George Street, not a bother on him. I said to myself: this is my kind of place! I was drawn here by the energy of freedom and this allows me to stay consistent with my practices and feel inspired on a daily basis.
There are so many amazing artists down here and I'm so blessed to be part of this creative community. You can just totally be yourself here. There is no having to put up a front for work versus personal life. You can be exactly what you want to be. It has captured my heart. I work with and have many collaborations with people in the area and their work is forever captured in the art and I scan a lot of real-life objects that end up in my VR environment. Though I may travel a lot, Hastings will always feel like home.
RC: What advice would you give to other emerging artists?
Art is not a career, it's a lifestyle, a way of being. To live it, you need to become free.
~Ornagh
O: Don’t rush, you will miss the moment. Art is not a career, it's a lifestyle, a way of being. To live it, you need to become free. Free from other people's expectations of you. Free to explore all of your ideas and feelings and reflect on why, and what you are learning from them. Free from your resistance against creating the work. Free to develop processes that keep you in a good headspace to deliver. Free from distractions, so you are looking into the areas you have a true interest in, and not what’s laid in front of you by TV, corporations, social media, or the wants and interests of your peers. Free to sink into your taste, and have time to know why a colour or a shape or person feels just so stunning to you. Free to hold these objects and people, and have them around you, to inspire you constantly. Free to wander, explore and play, which is where most of our inspiration is found.
Art is not about how many hours you put in or how many artworks you put out. That is the business of art, an entirely different beast. The output is just the tip of the iceburn. Being an artist is about living your authentic truth and being free to be the totality of yourself, and expressing that through your unique vision. As my friend Jeffrey Lewis Reed said to me when I met him on the seafront, and was feeling particularly stressed about delivering a piece for a deadline: ‘Honey, you are the art’.
Ornagh's collection of extended reality artworks and photography prints are now available through her website ornagh.com/shop
You can support Ornagh by following her on social media @ornaghworld on Instagram, X and Facebook.
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