Brian Newman - Artist In Residence
As part of the Artist In Residence programme, Photo Museum Ireland supported Brian Newman’s work exploring the associations and perceptions around the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, one of the institutions in the midst of Northern Ireland’s struggle for political identity.
The Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland is a Protestant fraternity founded in 1795. It is pledged to uphold and propagate the Protestant Christian faith within a broader, increasingly secular and diverse European island. Association considers the remoteness and isolation of border Lodges where diminishing numbers of Lodge members secure the fraternity’s ageing meeting places.
With his project Association Newman focuses on the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland as an institution that exists within the divide of Irish and British identities. These sensitive images show an organisation that is in some ways deeply embedded in local communities and in others increasingly isolated, a sense of which is conveyed by the spaces within the Lodges themselves.
Newman has built relationships for over a decade with his subjects and this is reflected in the access he has been given to individual Lodges and their members. This timely project and publication presents a portrait of the Orange Order that seeks to go beyond stereotypical representations to reveal a more nuanced and considered perspective.
Photo Museum Ireland produced a publication of Association which we launched in November 2023 with a conversation between the artist and Colin Graham, Professor of English at Maynooth University.
In conversation event and launch for Association at Photo Museum Ireland.
ORANGE HALLS ALONG THE BORDER
Royal Irish Academy, March 2024
“Newman’s photographic approach to the Orange Order is intimate and empathetically analytical. He does not intrude or interpret. He offers up a close (but not close-up) portrait of an institution. His photographic style sits between art photography and documentary photography in a way that has a clear lineage in recent decades in Northern Ireland.
It is a mode of photography that allows for a long, slow look at things, and in which the physical textures of objects, landscapes and materials become meaningful.
Most obviously, this is undramatic photography.
We might think of the Orange Order primarily through its parades—public, colourful, performative
acts of celebration and heritage, or triumphalism and intimidation, depending on one’s viewpoint. In Newman’s work the colour and bombast have been drained, so that the images are dominated by the grey and the drab—the concrete of the car park, the rendering on the wall, the industrial steel of the shipping container. And the lines where these dullness’s meet draw the eye to the banal”
– Colin Graham
Artist Biography:
Brian Newman is a photographer and videographer. He was born in Belfast and studied at Ulster University, graduating with a BA (Hons.) Visual Communication. In 2016, he was awarded an MFA in Photography. His work has been widely exhibited as part of Photo Museum Ireland’s five-year Reframing the Border programme. As part of the Artist in Residence programme, Photo Museum Ireland has supported Brian Newman’s work exploring the associations and perceptions around the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland.