Location: 245 Washington Street in Gloucester

Insights On Site 

The White-Ellery House (1710) has served as the backdrop for a series of one-day contemporary art installations (Insights On Site) by local artists for six years running. The series continues in August with Now.Then.Again, an exploration of time and memory by Robert Trumbour. This event is free and open to the public.

In Now.Then.Again. Trumbour explores ideas provoked by 19th century philosopher, Henri Bergson who, in response to his dissatisfaction with science’s framing of time, argued for a theory he called “Duration”; the notion that time is not quantitative and linear but rather qualitative and temporal and continually informed by the dynamic process of memory. Trumbour’s interest in this site is not concerned with specific memories or histories per se, but rather with the space that exists between memory and the present moment. Now. Then. Again. is in direct response to the static memory provoked by the structure’s 300-year history and the continually evolving latent memory infused by the fleeting and ever changing “present moment.” Materials and processes used to make “Now. Then. Again.” include gypsum, wood, ash, soft molds, casting and video projection.

About Rob Trumbour

Rob Trumbour, AIA is Associate Professor of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology (Boston, MA), a founding partner in the design/research practice Khôra, and the founding director of the Boston-based design collaborative Artforming. Educated in the fields of the fine arts and architecture, Rob’s current work engages in art, architecture and landscape through the medium of installation art and emerging technologies.

Rob’s built work explores the interwoven themes of space, time and memory through a variety of mediums and fabrication processes ranging from fabrics and video projection, wood, ice, concrete and gypsum castings. Work is often highly collaborative involving a number of collaborators including students, visual artists, architects, writers, musicians and composers. Through the questions evoked from the active engagement of both rational and intuitive processes of design thinking and direct making Rob’s work seeks to expose the relationships between material properties, spatial compositions and visceral experience.

About the White-Ellery House

The White-Ellery House, located at 245 Washington Street in Gloucester at the Route 128 Grant Circle Rotary, was built in 1710 and is one of just a handful of First Period houses in Eastern Massachusetts that survives to this day. Unlike other structures of this period, the largely unfurnished house has had very few interior alterations over the years. Stepping inside today, visitors enter much the same house they would have 300 years ago. The historic home is open on the first Saturday of the month from May through October as part of Escapes North 17th Century Saturdays. Parking is available off Poplar Street in the field behind the house. 

Image courtesy of Robert Trumbour.