Ecce Iterum is an exhibition of site specific art work in a range of media including sound, photography and sculpture, by a collective of Chester based artists: Kate Gater, Estelle Woolley and Alexandru Modoi. The exhibition title is Latin for ‘see again’, which refers to the castle being seen in a new way.
Kate Gater (MA FRSA) is an artist working with sound, installation and digital technologies, currently finishing her PhD in Sound Art at The University of Chester. Her work deals with sonic memories on time, place and recollection. Gater has recently exhibited at Goldsmiths and The Whitechapel Gallery. For ‘Ecce Iterum’, Gater has produced an installation and sound art compositions which draw on the rich and dynamic history of Chester and the castle as an important port and trading centre. ‘The Art of Precious Scars’ uses an amalgamation of ideas from sailing rigs and rope, to imported pottery from distant shores, combined with the idea of the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Kintsugi repairs broken ceramics with precious metal, so teaching us that broken objects are not something to hide but to display with pride. Using the fluid medium of sound art compositions, Gater has interwoven field recorded sounds from inside the castle walls with post production and Foley sounds, giving an aurality to the past and present whilst creating a new experience for the visitor.
Alexandru Modoi works with photography and developing technologies, interrogating the photographic image of objects working together - photographs which can be used for 3D representations. He works with digital and analogue photography which often implies developing technologies, suggesting that a contemporary practice can be aware of its past and simultaneously be looking into the future too. He graduated from Manchester School of Art with Master of Art in Photography, has exhibited his work at The Holden Gallery Manchester, Tate Britain and Kingston Museum, and is preparing for his PhD. Modoi has produced three photographs exhibited on easels in the ground floor of the Agricola Tower. The photographs are of Chester Castle taken from different view-points, and processed by 3D software in order to show new perspectives.
Estelle Woolley is an interdisciplinary artist and MA Fine Art graduate from The University of Chester. She has exhibited widely across the North West and Wales, and actively works to raise the profile of contemporary art in Chester. She has a keen interest in collecting fragile materials and exploring ways to combine them with other objects, and often sounds. Woolley’s work consists of an installation of sound sculptures constructed from a mixture of Georgian, Elizabethan and Edwardian copper coins. The coins have been exposed to oxidise, adding subtle moments of colour. Emanating from the sculptures are a variety of delicate sounds of pennies falling at different pitches and speeds, in a meditative and contemplative arrangement, echoing throughout the stairwell of the Agricola Tower. ‘Wishing Wells’ draws on the history of the castle’s former mint and former well while also making reference to the idea of collecting and links with the Grosvenor Museum. Curious small scale juxtaposed objects including a crown of thorns also nestle into the alcoves as visitors make their way up to the top of the tower.
