Catrin Morgan is Assistant Professor in Illustration at Parsons School of Design. She is an illustrator, artist, and designer whose practice is concerned with mathematical, architectural, and theoretical systems. Catrin has an MA in Communication Art and Design from The Royal College of Art in London and a PhD in Visual Communication also from the RCA. Her first book, Phantom Settlements (Ditto Press, 2011), an illustrated exploration of the work of Ryan Gander, Jamie Shovlin, and Tom McCarthy, was produced in collaboration with Mireille Fauchon and the design studio Julia. Her second book, an illustrated edition of Ben Marcus’s landmark of experimental fiction, The Age of Wire and String, was published by Granta Books in 2013. In 2017 she was invited to produce a limited edition artist’s book, Studies for Studies, at Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale in New York and, in 2018, Jerome’s Study, a further collaboration with Max Porter, was published by Test Center Books in London.

The focus of Catrin’s research while at GIDEST are illustrations which are functioning in deceptive or unethical contexts. For the purposes of this work, an illustration is defined as any image participating in a larger communicative text: an article, a website, a text message, an email, or a flier, for example. The goal of the research is to establish a genre of illustrations operating outside of the illustration industry (often in ethically dubious circumstances) and to use these to reflect on the way in which power and identity operate within illustration more broadly. This research builds on Catrin’s PhD research which established the role that illustrations have played in facilitating published deceptions. The research will begin with a search for moments where illustrations seem to be causing slippages into magical thinking or the insertion and overlaying of fictional narratives into everyday reality. The resulting body of research and writing (in which illustration and design will play a critical role) will take a semi-fictional approach with the goal of demonstrating how image and text work together to create portals into powerful fictional narratives that go on to impact reality.