Great Expectations
13 February – August 2015
An Eye if placed at five Feet above the Surface of the Earth or Sea, sees two Miles & a Quarter every way: but if it be at twenty feet high, it can see 5 3/4 miles.
David Jennings
(words found on the reverse of the Seaton Tool Chest inventory,
from An Introduction to the Use of the Globes, and the
Orrery: As Also the Application of Astronomy to Chronology, 1766)
Inspired by a series of enigmas surrounding the world’s most complete collection of 18th century tools, Great Expectations weaves together past, present and future in a video and sculpture connecting public spaces in the Medway towns of Gillingham, Rochester and Chatham with the private interiors of home and school.
Housed in Rochester’s Guildhall Museum, the Seaton Tool Chest is a large wooden cabinet housing the 200 tools that were a gift from upholsterer and cabinetmaker Joseph Seaton to his son Benjamin in 1796. Benjamin responded to his father’s generosity by using the tools to make a beautiful cabinet to store them in, but they were never used again. For Chodzko the act is the perfect symbol of acceptance and rejection between child and parent.
Combining animation and documentary styles, the video explores these quietly subversive ideas, re-imagining the chest as a conceptual art object transformed into a virtual entity or spaceship in a revolution instigated by the tools. Now living in digital form, the tools narrate their history, a tale of familial, social and cosmic joinery. They also claim to have made Ark Eye, an accompanying wooden sculptural object that has crash-landed from their digital universe into ours, landing in the Medway river, to become a sci-fi museum curiosity.
Over six months Great Expectations appears in the consumerist surroundings of a DIY store, the rarefied environment of the museum, as a hyper-real intrusion on a massive screen overlooking a busy bus station and car park, in the domestic residence of a traditional sign-writer and his graphic-designer daughter, and within a school community.
Adam Chodzko’s art explores the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour through video installations and subtle interventions, situated both within the gallery and the wider public realm. www.adamchodzko.com
Great Expectations is realised in partnership with The Guildhall Museum Rochester, Medway Council, and is the ninth and final project commissioned by Hoodwink.
Friday 13 Feburary - Thursday 26 March 2026 B&Q, Will Adams Way, Gillingham, Kent ME8 6BY
Friday 13 February - Friday 11 September 2026 (Video) Guildhall Museum, High Street, Rochester ME1 1PY
Friday 27 March - Friday 24 April 2026 Mick the Signwriter and LB Signs, Rochester
Monday 25 April - July 2015 Bradfields Academy, Chatham