Driftwood provides a material connection between Richard Long’s 'Circle in Alaska 'and Roger Ackling’s 'Weybourne', but a much more important link is their deep friendship, forged as students St Martin's School of Art in 1966. Their first collaboration came ten years later in the shape of a cycle ride by tandem through France, a shared experience that led to each artist creating individual bodies of work. It took another thirty years for their friendship to result in a collaboration towards a shared artwork, but in the summer of 2006 this happened not once, but many times: Ackling working in Norfolk, Long in Somerset – each sending work to the other by post. Roger, as always, used a magnifying glass to burn the sun’s rays into the surface of the wood, Richard added his mark with thumbprints of clay and mud. The resulting body of work 'Hands On, Hands Off' was shown at Ingleby the following summer.

Roger made a number of exhibitions at the gallery from 2004 until his death in 2014, arriving with a suitcase full of tiny works that had the power to transform the largest space. He was an alchemist – part artist, part magician. We miss him.