Martin Seeds Photographer

‘Assembly’ is a body of work in six parts, that is set in the Stormont Estate, the home of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The work uses the power of photography to generate allegory - letting the plants, trees and foliage deliver a message from the grounds surrounding the Northern Ireland parliament building about the struggles embedded in a fragile political landscape.

‘Assembly’ suggests the importance of the grounds as a common material space beyond culture in which difference and likeness are both articulated and intertwined in a natural world outside of the political chamber. View Assembly text

from left: Assembly v, Assembly iv, Assembly iii, 2016

Assembly v. 2016
Digital C-type, colour matched artist frame, 101.6 x 76 cm

Assembly iv. (detail), 2016
SIlver gelatin prints, paper size 30.5 x 24 cms, image size 7.5 x 5 cms

Assembly iii., 2017
Archival Pigment Print, 101.6 x 76 cm

Assembly i. Architectural plans of the Northern Ireland Parliament building at Stormont.
Giclée. Crown Copyright, used with permission.

Assembly vi., 2016
Archival pigment print, 55.4 x 40.6 cm

Assembly vi., 2016
Archival pigment print, 40.6 x 20.8 cm

Assembly vi., 2016
Archival pigment print, 55.4 x 40.6 cm

Assembly i. Architectural plans of the Northern Ireland Parliament building at Stormont.
archival pigment print. Crown Copyright, used with permission.

Assembly vi., 2016
Archival pigment prints, 40.6 x 20.8 cm and 55.4 x 40.6 cm

Assembly vi., 2016
Archival pigment prints, 40.6 x 20.8 cm

Addendum: Martin Seeds July 2018.

When I started making this work in late 2015 there was an optimism about the future of the Assembly. Perhaps this was due to the Fresh Start Agreement in November that year that re-energised the political landscape. However a few months after this work was finished and exhibited in 2016 the Northern Ireland Assembly collapsed.

Initially the financial mishandling of an environmental heating scheme was the source of the impasse between the two main political parties. In a short period of time old tribal grievances emerged and became woven into arguments between the parties about who was responsible. The disagreements have been so deep that the viability of the Good Friday Agreement as a framework for governance is being questioned.

2018 - the twenty year anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement passed uneventfully and the Assembly borne from it was silent and empty. The prospect of a future Assembly has been twisted by and into the outcome of BREXIT.

Assembly vi. 30 pairs of landscape photographs made in the grounds of the Stormont Estate, 2016

Site specific projection, 1080p HD, no sound.
Installed at The Regency Town House, Brighton, as part of Brighton Photo Fringe, 2016.