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Ghost Station
Ghost Station is the new exhibition from ArtHertz, staged at Bletchley Park – the home of code breaking during World War II and the birthplace of modern technology. The month long event is part of the Milton Keynes Heritage Open Days – Summer of Culture 2012 and explores themes of codes, code-breaking and messages, Alan Turing, the role of pigeons and women in World War II. The exhibition also explores the ongoing ArtHertz agenda of the analogue / digital distinction. Ghost Station will also include the critically acclaimed collaborative piece, Station X (featured on BBC Radio 4) – an installation that documents the Bletchley buildings with sound, film, photography and surfaces.
Over 20 selected contemporary artists’ work will be interspersed amongst the museum’s exhibits in Hut 8, the Bombe Hut and Hut 11. The Enigma Cinema at Bletchley will also play host to screenings of short films curated by Rushes Soho Shorts Film Festival and ArtHertz presenting the UK Premiere of Al Croseri’s feature length film,The Pigeoneers, Esther Johnson’s ‘Analogue Kingdom’ and ‘Tune In’. There will also be a closing party and premiere of the war pigeon short, ‘Gustav’ by Dennis Da Silva on 30th September
SHOW OPEN TO PUBLIC FROM 6TH SEPTEMBER – 30TH SEPTEMBER. PRIVATE VIEW STRICTLY BY INVITATION ONLY.
Station X comes to Bletchley Park
We are pleased to announce that Station X will be part of the Ghost Station exhibition from ArtHertz at Bletchley Park, opening on September 6th 2011.
Work by Caroline Devine, Maya Ramsay, Luke Williams and Rachael Marshall will be in Hut 8, often referred to as ‘Turing’s Hut’. The hut was restored in 2005 and houses several displays, including the one about carrier pigeons during the war.
We are grateful for the support of the Milton Keynes Community Foundation once again.
Listen to BBC Radio 4 Today broadcast about Bletchley Park
The Today programme that featured the Station X artists and CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust is in the BBC’s 2012 archive, dated Monday 30 April. The feature starts at approximately 2:20, just before the sports item.
John Humphries also mentions a BBC gallery of images from the project.
Station X featured on the Today programme
Interviews with Iain Standen (Bletchley Park Trust CEO), mixed media artist Maya Ramsay and audio artist Caroline Devine were broadcast on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme at 08:20 this morning. Click here for the schedule for the programme and here for a BBC online gallery. The programme isn’t yet available on iPlayer.
Station X exhibition opens this Thursday, 3rd May
Station X opens this Thursday evening, 3rd May 2012 at the Milton Keynes Gallery Project Space (click for the gallery’s page about the project, including an interview with BBC reporter Richard Williams). The private view is from 6pm – 8pm on the 3rd. The exhibition will be open until 27th May 2012.
If you’ve seen recent documentaries about the codebreaking work and Alan Turing you’ll have had a glimpse of some of the spaces inside Blocks C and D. The four of us have spent many days exploring the sights, sounds and smells of the buildings.
The exhibition is the result of a collaboration that documents the buildings with sound, film, photography and surfaces.
Maya, Caroline and Iain Standen (CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust) will be talking about Station X on Radio 4′s Today programme on Monday 30th April, between 8am and 9am.
Click on any of our names in the previous post for more information about our work, and there’s a link to the Facebook page at the bottom too.
Documenting Station X: Exhibition 4th – 27th May 2012
STATION X is a collaboration between an installation artist, a photographer, a sound artist and a film maker.
The four artists are working at Bletchley Park, also known as STATION X, ‘home of the code-breakers’. Eleven thousand people worked at Bletchley Park during World War Two and were sworn to secrecy about their activities for the following 30 years. It is also the birthplace of modern information technology.
The artists are documenting some of the derelict Grade II listed buildings in which the code-breakers worked, which have always been inaccessible to the public due to their dangerous state of disrepair. Conditions are harsh in rooms that have been unventilated and occupied only by pigeons and rats for years. Some of the buildings give the impression that the workers have just downed tools and left; a rusty old coat hanger swings on a hook with a name scrawled on it and a file of technical information disintegrates on a window sill. Others provide fascinating insights into what happens when nature is left to its own devices for years.
After decades of decay there is an ongoing fundraising campaign towards the renovation of the buildings.
STATION X will provide a sensory insight into these disused buildings and the remnants of their secret past. It will offer a contemporary interpretation of what is arguably one of Britain’s most important 20th century historical sites. The exhibition will document the visual and aural histories imbued in the buildings before they are lost when the renovation takes place. Milton Keynes Gallery Project Space is the venue for the Station X exhibition from May 3rd to June 1st, 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.
Rachael Marshall is a photographer who will be conducting photographic documentation of the buildings. Having studied architecture, Rachael has an ongoing obsession with the way in which we value and preserve certain buildings.
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.
The work of Luke Williams involves film, carving, construction and installation practices. Luke produces devices which co-exist with the space in which they are placed. He is interested in the narratives and reinterpretation of science.
Read an interview with Maya Ramsay here.
- This project has been assisted by funding from the Milton Keynes Community Foundation and PMC Loudspeakers
