INVERNESS: The Inverness County Centre for the Arts (ICCA) is pleased to announce a new exhibition by Karly Kehoe and Tim Brennan “When Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Hidden History of Orangeism in Inverness,” which opens on Saturday, Nov. 26 at 2 p.m.
According to a press release issued by the ICCA, in the summer of 2020, as the Shean Co-op storage building in Inverness was being demolished, a secret room was discovered. This room housed a hidden history of the Orange Order in Inverness, the ICCA said, noting that a collection of artifacts dating back to 1903 was uncovered which included ceremonial items, membership log books, meeting minutes, sashes, and a Union flag.
The ICCA said this exhibition shares some of these discovered items, including the 14-foot tall archway with the words “In God Is My Trust” written across the top. These artifacts are blended with a dark, intense, series of photographs from Tim Brennan that were produced in response to what was brought to light from behind the walls of the hidden room, they noted.
Research for the exhibition was led and completed by Saint Mary’s University professor, Karly Kehoe, and research assistant, Kit Cowper, whose boards at the entrance of the show explain sectarianism and the history of Orangeism, what the order’s early years in Inverness looked like, and various aspects of its membership, such as members’ countries of origin, their church of affiliation, and their occupations between 1903 and 1920.
From Margaree Forks, the ICCA said Kehoe is professor and Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Communities at Saint Mary’s University. Her research considers settler colonialism, Catholicism, and anti-Catholicism in the north Atlantic world, they said, noting that her most recent book, Empire and Emancipation: Scottish and Irish Catholics at the Atlantic Fringe, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2022.
Brennan is from Inverness and graduated from high school there, later graduating from NSCAD with a BFA and from York University with an MFA, the ICCA said. He began photographing in his early teens and has had exhibits here and there, and some people have bought his pictures and given him grants, they said. He taught photography at NSCAD for more than 15 years, and his first photograph was of a train down at the railway station in Inverness for which he stole his mothers’ camera for the shot. He has been looking for that picture ever since, they said.
“What drives me to photograph is the desire to see the transformation that occurs and what remains of its effects,” Brennan said. “The way that light collides with the negative and unequivocally transforms it, just as we transform our landscapes as we exist within our environments. My photographs are the result of such altercations. The emulsion on the negative does not exist in a vacuum; it is corruptible and susceptible to damage. The light travelling through the atmospheric spectrum bends, splits, fades and fogs and is rarely ever seen the same way twice. The photographs in the Orange Order exhibition are an effort to reflect and invigorate the mystery, energy and aura that these objects evoke today, as well as historically.”