Although easy for pub and theatre goers to miss or simply ignore, ‘The Journey’ is a statue built by County Durham local Fenwick Lawson, created to tell the story of monks carrying the body of Durham’s patron saint St Cuthbert to the cathedral in 995, marking the foundation of the city. Lawson uses wood and chainsaws to create his art, and his sculptures are often coated in bronze to preserve them, being initially based in the mainstream sphere of ‘art for art’s sake’. He felt his work needed to be more fulfilling, and so decided to redefine it to hold more morals, to ‘engage with the human condition’. This led many of his later works, including ‘The Journey’, to consider religious metaphors, expressing consciousness of humanity beyond religious narrative.
‘The Journey’ on one level shows St Cuthbert’s body being moved to the site of what is now the Cathedral after monks fled from a Danish invasion. It shows the struggle of this movement and the founding of Durham itself. The grief of the monks carrying Cuthbert’s coffin from Lindisfarne is visible, a reminder of the pain involved in Durham becoming the saint’s final resting place, emphasized by Lawson’s use of a chainsaw to carve their face, acting as a reminder for Durham students, tourists, and locals of what a privilege it is to have a city as beautiful as Durham on the map, identifying the struggle that was involved in its creation, and the determination that was needed to live and study where we do.
Although a religious pilgrimage is an odd object to place outside a prime location for clubbing in Durham, the fact the statue is often covered in vomit and using as a public urinal on account of weekend club-goers makes it a curious addition to the surrounding Nando’s, Chiquito and Gala Theatre. In some ways, its public but innocuous persona in a city filled with beauty is part of what makes it so fascinating.
