Saoirse Higgins

Saoirse is an artist and designer from Dublin, Ireland based on Papay. Her practice explores the relationship between man and nature in the anthropogenic era. Her work is process-driven, often collaborative with scientists and islanders and has a scientifically influenced playful approach. The work looks at live real time and geological slow time, macro scale and personal scale. She explores our ways of knowing our surroundings, elevating the normal viewpoints to develop a sense of ‘response-ability’ (Haraway, 2016). Anthropologist Donna Haraway describes this ability as a necessary urgent action to harmonise and adapt to our changing climate in order to be able to survive in the future. She has shown work internationally in Shanghai, China; SíM, Reyjavik, Montreal New media festival, Transmediale-Berlin, Exit Art and Location One gallery-New York. She has held residencies at Listhus, Iceland; Swatch Peace Art Hotel, Shanghai, China; Location1, New York and the Banff Centre for the Arts.

For ØY festival 2018 she is showing some of the audio-visual work made on Papay over the last year…. exploring the ‘ec-øy-system’ on space station Pap-øy.

Rik Hammond

Rik Hammond always dreamed of adding a new island to the Orkney archipelago, a utopia of artists, for artists, by artists, We are honoured to be able to show a piece Rik made for the first ØY festival in 2016. Unfortunately since the last festival we have lost Rik. I hope instead of a new…

Poor Man’s Corner

‘Poor Man’s Corner’ has evolved out of a group of individuals from widely differing backgrounds who live on Papay. Margaret Rendall, a lifelong resident, had provided accordion music for every kind of event on Papay over many decades. After she sadly had to leave the island on health grounds, both she and her music were…

Hilary Grant

Hilary Grant is a knitwear company based in Orphir, founded in 2011 by Hilary, a trained textile designer and in 2016, joined by her partner, Rob who trained in architecture and now turns his hand to design.

Together they specialise in pattern, exclusively for the medium of knit and strive to innovate and challenge the possibilities within the confines of commercial knitwear manufacturing. Seeking parallels with other mediums and techniques such as weaving, print-making, pointilism and 8-bit computer graphics, they are interested in how scale, pattern and colour react and together they have a design approach that is both algorithmic and yet intuitive.

“For ØY festival I have created a pattern made of single stitches or dots. I was interested in the idea of islands as constellations, and a group of islands seperated by geography but connected by culture and people. The islands are more that the sum of their parts.”

Karen Tweed

KAREN TWEED, the walking whirlwind, extraordinary illustrator and lyrical accordionist extraordinaire always explores her amazing creativity with an eloquence, hilarity and sentimentality wherever she finds herself in the world.

Right now, that is around the islands of Orkney where she lives. Celebrating the big skies and uncluttered view of the stars, she is bringing her accordion and her sketchbooks to Papay…

For this year’s Space Station ØY she will be performing at the Muckle Supper on Saturday Night with her own compositions, some melodies inspired by bird themes and newly composed music for solo accordion inspired by the astronomer John Herschel and his friend and photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. She will also be sketching and notating during the festival at many of the events – do come and chat, share ideas and illustrative journalling. .

Cassia Dodman

Cassia Dodman is an artist from Papa Westray. Her work is primarily sculptural, including active, charged features that explore fluctuating spatial boundaries, unpredictable peripheries, and material ecologies. This year she has exhibited at RSA New Contemporaries, and was a shortlisted artist for artbyte gallery’s Hotel Generation programme, themed ‘Islands’.

Kevin Quigley

Is an artist / curator who’s main interest is exploring and expanding on esoteric culture within art making. Focused on asking questions on archaic ‘occult’ ideas and remoulding them into new strains of thinking for the present to produce discussion on modern living and being.

Fiona Sanderson

Transformation. Permanence. The possibility of change. I believe that everyone likes to play with fire and hammer things hard.

Harry Josephine Giles and Atzi

Deep Wheel Orcadia is a science fiction story in Orcadian, set on a little space station far into the future and far into the galaxy. With poetry and music, the performance wonders if the future might be a bit like the past, a space station might be a bit like a group of islands, and whether anyone ever really feels at home in a language or a place.

James Watson

James Watson is one of Orkney’s most adventurous musicians, playing and composing in genres ranging from folk and classical to electronic and ambient. His performances encorporate a heavy mix of acoustic and synthesised effects, built in loops and samples, in a truly unique manner. Wooden Sole Music