• Block D Interior

  • Maya Ramsay at work in Block D

  • Maya Ramsay at work in Block C

  • Intercept Operator, surface lifted from Bletchley Park wall with carbonised cobwebs & coat rack

The Station X project offered a multi-sensory insight into the disused buildings of Bletchley Park (otherwise known as Station X)- the home of the World War II Code-breakers and arguably one of Britain’s most important historical sites.

Eleven thousand people worked in secret at Bletchley Park during World War 2 and were sworn to secrecy about their activities for the following thirty years. Bletchley Park is where the first programmable electronic computer was invented and the Station X exhibition coincided with the centenary celebrations of the birth of Alan Turing, the ‘father of computer science’, who worked at Bletchley Park.

The exhibition documented the visual and aural histories imbued in the fabric of the disused buildings, before they were lost following planned renovation of the buildings. Four artists were granted special access to document these highly atmospheric buildings, which were usually inaccessible to the public owing to their dangerous state.

Over the period of a year, the artists endured extremely harsh conditions whilst working in asbestos and mould filled rooms that had been unventilated and occupied by rats and pigeons for decades. A film of the artists working in the space can be seen here:

In some of the buildings it appears as if the workers have just downed tools and left; a rusty coat hanger swings on a hook with a name scrawled on it and diagrams lie in a file covered in mould. Others, provide fascinating insights into what happens when nature is left to its own devices in a building for two and a half decades.

The exhibition was the result of a collaboration between artist Maya Ramsay, sound artist Caroline Devine, photographer Rachael Marshall and filmmaker Luke Williams. The works included surfaces lifted from the walls of the buildings, recordings of sounds produced by and within the decaying buildings and photographic and filmed documentation of the buildings.

The Station X exhibition, as featured on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, was first presented at MK Gallery Project Space in 2012 and then in Alan Turing’s hut at Bletchley Park from 2012-2013.

Maya Ramsay's Bletchley Park works include surfaces lifted from walls that were covered in a myriad of cobwebs that had become carbonised during a fire. Her piece Blood, Sweat & Tears was displayed in the Bletchley Park Rescued and Restored exhibition at Bletchley Park Museum from 2016- 2018. More on the renovations can be seen at Google Cultural Institute: 

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/the-restoration-of-bletchley-park/QQZuD4hx

The Station X project is featured in the book Saving Bletchley Park by Dr. Sue Black: 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/saving-bletchley-park/sue-black/9781908717924

Interviews

Bletchley Park’s derelict huts captured in Station X exhibition BBC interview, May 2012

The art of Bletchley Park Decay, interviewed by Zubeida Malik, BBC Radio 4 Today programme, April 2012

Station X, interviewed by Richard Williams, BBC Radio Beds, Herts & Bucks, 2012

Features

Bletchley Park Rescued and Restored https://bletchleypark.org.uk/visit-us/what-to-see/hut-12

Saving Bletchley Park https://www.waterstones.com/book/saving-bletchley-park/sue-black/9781908717924

Drones in the sky, whistleblowers in jail: how art is responding to Big Brother's watch: A-Z of Surveillance, Christine Jun, Dazedigital.com, October 2013

Cracking the Code, Simon Tait, Arts Industry, issue 289, January 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-17879181, BBC News feature, April 2012

Links

Station X Blog

Station X Facebook

 

Images: (1) Rachel Marshall, (3) Luke Williams