Highlights

Rag and bone man, 2026 by Bethany Stead

Oil on panel

51 x 41 cm

Silk Mask, 2025 by Vicky Price

Silk Mask mono-print.

40 x 30 cm

Ballad O' Bones, 2025 by Lauren Saunders

For ‘The Critical Fish Trail’, forty-two Hull-based artists and writers were each given a fish to respond to. This image and accompanying poem (below) form my Hull-based heritage response to COD.

Ballad O Bones

Down Spurn an’ up t’Olderness bend,
Where t’North Sea’s mood can twist or mend,~
Lives she who skegs at fish wi’ care,
Reads cod like tea leaves wi’ bones laid bare.

Nell’s no witch, nor wears a hood,
Jus’a top from Boyes, an’ boots caked good.
Request to learn of what comes hence
And hear her bones speak consequence.

Tossin’ ’em down, a Seer stirred,
Each rib a sign, each spine a word.
No charts, no news, no need to sleuth,
Insight found in brittle truth.

The air gets thick, the bones run white,
They whisper low by lantern light.
No preacher’s book, no doctor’s creed,
Just cod an’ fate an’ bloody need.

“That curve there? Storm. That crack? Divorce.
Those there? A bain born breach, of course.”
She don’t do chance, she don’t do guess.
The bones, they talk. She does t’rest.

“Come ‘ere,” she says, “see how that falls?
Luck comes close – yer fortune calls.
But this one’s angled – a’you been sick?
There’s illness brewin’, fast an’ thick.”

Some reckon she’s mad, but think on deep…
When cod bones speak Hull folk won’t sleep.
You laughed, at first. They laughed as well.
Just once ter neglect this warning bell.

One deckie came, they called him Jack,
She read the bones, stood solemn back.
“Avoid water, lad, ‘til Tuesday night,
Steel’ll buckle, the flood’ll bite.”

Chucklin’, he sailed, til trawler capsized.
Could’ve lived, like she advised.
Now even lads who’d scoff an’ jeer,
Keep cod bones close, an’ her more near.

They tell the story, the cod and ‘er,
Together with bones, prophecy stirs,
Cod ain’t caught to fry or shift,
It tell the truth, through bone and gift.

Hull folk know we’re one wit’ sea.
But codbones carry what will be…
An’ when Nell’s gone, who’ll read the text?
Who’ll know what bones say will come next?

84 x 119 cm

Ichor, 2024 - 2025

Caroline Rudge

Egg tempera and platinum leaf on panel

120 x 90 cm