Following my residency at The Florence Trust I have been working on a project entitled STATION X.
STATION X is collaboration between an installation artist, a photographer and a sound artist.
Three artists have been granted access to make work at Bletchley Park, also known as STATION X, home of the code-breakers. 11, 000 people worked in secret at STATION X during World War Two and were sworn to secrecy about their work for the following 30 years. It is also where the first programmable electronic computer was invented.
The artists will be working in some of the Grade 1 listed buildings in which the code-breakers worked, which have always been inaccessible to the public due to their dangerous state of disrepair. After decades of decay there is an ongoing fundraising campaign towards their renovation.
The artists will be documenting these highly atmospheric buildings prior to their renovation; working in extremely harsh conditions in rooms that have been unventilated and occupied only by pigeons and rats for decades.
This project will provide an insight into these previously unseen buildings and the remnants of their secret past. It will offer a contemporary interpretation of arguably one of Britain’s most important 20th century historical sites and document the visual and aural histories imbued in these buildings before they are lost due to the renovation.
An exhibition of the artists’ work will be held in Milton Keynes Gallery Project Space from March to April 2012.
Caroline Devine is a sound artist who will be capturing the sounds produced by and within the decaying huts, exploring the spatial aspects of sound. Caroline is interested in voices that may be obscured, silenced or absent such as the employees at Bletchley who were sworn to secrecy for 30 years after the war.
http://www.devine.co.uk/linernotes
Rachael Marshall is a photographer who will be conducting photographic documentation of the buildings. Having previously studied architecture, Rachael has an ongoing obsession with the way in which we value and preserve certain buildings.
http://www.photographedbyrachael.com
Maya Ramsay is an installation artist who makes works using a process to lift pigment, debris and texture from surfaces in the built environment, in particular from buildings that are due to be demolished or restored. Maya specialises in making works that reference war through the associations that abstract marks can create.
