CATRIN MORGAN: RELAY

20 February - 21 March 2015

We are pleased to present Relay, Catrin Morgan second solo exhibition at dalla Rosa. The project considers particular relationships between military signalling and intelligence and domestic spaces. There are three elements to this exhibition; transmission, interception and reception.

Numbers Stations began with an interest in an online taxonomy called ‘The Enigma Control List’ which aims to classify unexplained radio activity. Many of the stations that appear on the list are ‘Numbers Stations’, mysterious radio stations which broadcast strings of numbers from locations all over the world these transmitters are tracked by amateur radio enthusiasts from the safety of their homes. These listeners have no access to the content of the transmissions they document and classify. Some stations listed may not be stations at all; they are equally likely to be radio interference from radar or sounds (such as birdsong) used as placeholders for commercial frequencies.

Dah-dah-di-di-di-dit is a response to the memories of Margaret Horsman who volunteered for military service as a seventeen year old at the outbreak of world war two and was assigned to signals intelligence on the strength of her Girl Guide badges in Morse code and semaphore. The images shown here serve as both Morse code transcriptions of Margaret’s recollections and imaginings of her experiences listening for and hearing Morse.

1042 Bletchley Park Mansions is an animation which simulates a larger project, 150,738,274,937,250 Bletchley Park Mansions. The larger piece is a work in progress and will be an algorithm capable of generating all of the mathematically possible permutations of Bletchley Park Mansion. The algorithm will work by recombining the mansions existing rooms and will form the basis of a computer program generating and displaying these variations as floor plans. Bletchley Mansion was a domestic space disrupted by the use it was put to by the UK government and the architectural ambitions of successive owners, 150,738,274,937,250 Bletchley Park Mansions reflects these disruptions and reorganisations whilst referring to the mathematics of recombination necessary for code breaking.

About the Artist
Catrin Morgan practice explores the relationship between text and image with a particular interest in creating work governed by underlying frameworks, rules and hidden meanings. Most of her projects are conceived in relation with the book format, from limited edition artist books to mainstream publishing. Her research on theTaxonomy of Deception developed into a PhD at the Royal College of Art, a project closely connected with her illustrations for Ben Marcus novel The Age of Wire and String, commissioned and published by Granta Books (2013).