In June 1972, the Scottish farmer Dougal Robertson was sailing across the Pacific with his family when a pod of killer whales attacked their schooner, Lucette. Robertson was about to drink his morning coffee when the hull beneath his feet suddenly split to reveal the fathomless ocean. The family had approximately two minutes to gather everything they could and board the lifeboat before the ship sank into the blue. And it was on this fragile dinghy that four adults and two children managed to survive without charts or compass, against 20ft waves, circling sharks, thirst, sunstroke and starvation for a staggering 38 days.
A coffee cup appears at the start of the American artist Nina Katchadourian’s riveting show, raised upon a plinth like a modernist sculpture. The original is lost beneath the waves, of course, somewhere off the Galápagos Islands. But Katchadourian has worked hard to find an exact replica, constantly checking to see if she has got it right with Douglas, eldest of the Robertson children, 18 at the time of this trauma. Accuracy is vital. For this is nothing less than an attempt at imaginative recreation.
