The Refuge Box, 2022

The Refuge Box audio poem was first commissioned for Between the Ears on BBC Radio 3 in 2007, produced by Julian May. Katrina Porteous’s poetry uses the wooden refuge on Holy Island causeway, built to save people cut off by the tide, to consider wider ideas of sanctuary. The Island itself is a refuge, both for people and for wild creatures. But it is also a place of exposure, and the poem explores these ambiguities. Katrina’s words are inspired by the voices of Islanders, rescuers, and a West African refugee, and by the wild voices of Lindisfarne’s seals, birds, wind and sea, which also form part of the audio collaboration.

In 2022 Katrina and Julian remade The Refuge Box. A version for the new museum has been created and forms an audio experience which accompanies a major new visual work by Olivia Lomenech Gill. Julian recorded Katrina and actor Chris Connel reading Katrina’s poem on Lindisfarne in September, capturing the Island’s sounds afresh. He then worked with Katrina and studio engineer Giles Aspen to create this new 14-minute installation.

Download The Refuge Box text (PDF).

The Refuge Box is published in Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books, 2014).

Many years ago I carried a large copper (etching) plate across the mudflats, to make a drawing of the first refuge box on the pilgrim’s crossing to Holy Island, part of St Cuthbert’s Way. A lot of the etching was created by the sand, caught in my gloves, it scratched through the ground on the plate and became part of the landscape in the final image.

This initial work was instigated by my lifelong love of Holy Island. I had lived locally for much of my life and have been a visitor to the island long before it became a popular tourist destination. The etching was also inspired by Katrina Porteous’ radio poem The Refuge Box, though the Refuge Box of Katrina’s title refers to the ‘motorists’ refuge box.

Ever since I came across Katrina’s work I was intrigued and haunted by it, expressing the voices of the fishermen, the communities, dialects, and traditions of the north Northumbrian coast. Over the years I have made several works about this coastline often incorporating fragments of text from Katrina’s poems.

Shifting Sands, 2023

There are many layers of cultural and religious history to Holy Island. Its biodiversity is hugely rich and at the heart of the community is fishing. This is consistent throughout the island’s occupation, from the monastic community through to the present-day visitors, migrating to and from the island. Fishing remains the island’s main economic activity outside of tourism.

Katrina’s work The Refuge Box tells of many strands of island life and has a timelessness quality which I also wanted to reflect in the visual interpretation. Centuries of history come together; the monks’ exile reflects the plight of refugees and asylum seekers today, crossing perilous waters in small boats, just as Cuthbert and Aidan would have done. There is no one not a migrant...

Ongoing threats to the livelihoods of the fishermen, such as changes in legislation proposed by DEFRA in 2022-23 highlight the vulnerability of coastal communities, in the face of the climate crisis and the complexities of a global economy.

I started with the Admiralty Sea Chart 111, mapping out the landscape from an aerial perspective. In doing this I became conscious of how small Holy Island is, hanging by a thread from the mainland. Surrounded by some of the most hazardous waters of the east coast, with the vast North Sea as its neighbour, the Island is for me a symbol of both fortitude and fragility. It is the sea that feeds us, and in front of whom we are all equal.

As well as the sea chart, I have included The Refuge Box poem in full, written on parchment by hand, though partially obscured by layers of collage. This lies beneath the work and is combined with elements of other works and words including the Fishermens Marks, a language of navigation that predated the Echometer (an aapparatus for measuring the depths of objects in water or underground). I wanted to plot out the landscape exactly according to the Sea Chart, an aerial view, but also show the causeway and the horizon and the sea, so blue and endless you’d think the sky had it swallowed up...Katrina Porteous.

It’s the human landscape of the island that interests me. The journeys, always involving the sea, made by so many to, from and past the island. Some of these journeys end prematurely on the rocks and reefs, with heroic rescues made by the Holy Island lifeboat crews. Sometimes the journeys end in tragedy, with the remains of those lost at sea, and the vessels, becoming part of the fabric of the Island.

I have always had an interest in the sea and boats, with one member of my family lost on The Titanic and other members of my family in the merchant and royal navy. I remember my grandfather recounting his experience of being on a corvette doing the Gibralter Run, and on a minesweeper in the Humber, where a total of 22 minesweepers were lost during World War II.

‘Shifting Sands’ is a mixed media artwork, with elements of collage, including the texts and words of the following:

• The Refuge Box, Katrina Porteous. Two Countries, Bloodaxe Books, 2014
• The Marks t’Gan By, Katrina Porteous. The Lost Music, Bloodaxe Books, 1996
• Extracts from the diary of Holy Island fisherman John Wilson
• Words of Holy Island fisherman Ralph Wilson
• Words of Holy Island fisherman Robin Henderson
• Words of Thelma Dunne (nee Tough)

Thanks to all of the people who have helped with information and research, particularly Linda Bankier of Berwick Archives, John Bevan of Holy Island Parish Council, Susan Harrison from English Heritage, and Reverend Sarah Hills, vicar of St Mary’s. Especial thanks to Ruth Haycock of English Heritage for facilitating this project and to Katrina Porteous, whose wealth of knowledge of the north Northumbrian fishing communities and whose words are an endless source of inspiration.