08/09/2025 - Acting in the Middle

8^th September 2025

Research Exchange: David Eckersley

This is a conversation I should have written during the summer break, when I was enjoying some distance from lecturing and studying. In many ways, though, the visit was a study in itself. Now, six weeks on, I’m piecing together the memory of it. On 18th July, I returned to my university to experience Dr David Eckersley’s exhibition Acting in the Middle and his accompanying walkthrough at The Toast House Gallery in Huddersfield.

Visiting the university always brings a sense of connection, even if distance learning often positions me at its margins. That remoteness, though sometimes isolating, has become essential to the independence required for doctoral research. It forms its own kind of educational environment, one created out of my cramped office with words, images, and questions, waiting for feedback from supervisors’ months down the line. Returning to Huddersfield for this exhibition, I hoped the journey would be worthwhile and it was.

I was particularly drawn to Eckersley’s exhibition because his practice aligns closely with my own research interests. He was also my internal examiner for the PM2, and his perspective continues to resonate with my methods of walking, performance, and photography. Meeting him in person rather than on a screen was important, not only to deepen my understanding of his work but to create a more human connection, one of proximity and reciprocity, especially after he had engaged closely with my own research. His welcome was generous, acknowledging the developments I’ve made, and expressing his pleasure at my attendance. These exchanges, though brief, are vital in sustaining the networks and conversations that shape my field.

Through the exhibition and walkthrough, I was able to explore cultural landscape inquiry from a perspective that both paralleled and diverged from my own. Eckersley’s work is framed within multiple contexts, access, social structures, aesthetics, environmental ecologies, and the ongoing realities of climate crisis. His use of walking, performance, and photography to situate practice echoed many of my own methodologies, yet his orientation offered a different, ‘southern’ lens.

The exhibition itself was housed in the Toast House Gallery, a low-ceilinged series of four rooms beneath the café. Clean and well illuminated, the space had the white, clinical clarity of a gallery, softened slightly by glass partitions that created subtle separations between rooms. It was a modern, intimate setting that held Eckersley’s work effectively.

The central room was minimal: two wooden floor sculptures stood draped in paper, the sheets trailing across the floor and into the pathway of the audience. On the back wall, small photographs were pinned in a measured line. To either side, smaller rooms carried the same minimal sensibility. The left room contained an archival display, a board and table layered with books, sketches, and natural objects, alongside light boxes and wall instructions describing “how to walk in the Kilder.” The right-hand room mirrored this structure, with another archive table displaying objects, books, and photographs. On one wall, a green sign declaring acid futures was lit by a bank of UV lamps that performed a live photographic exposure. The process itself (which I confess I cannot name) fascinated me in its combination of the technical and the performative. The image was not only exposed to ultraviolet light but also to the gallery’s ambient illumination, rendering the act of exposure into a live performance.

Finally, the glass-partitioned room in the centre housed a third archival table, its contents again a mix of books, photographs, and natural finds. A surprising highlight here was the inclusion of George King, founder of the Aetherius Society cult. It made me laugh, comedy seeping into the work in the form of satirical commentary and reminded me that humour has a place even within serious research practice. The back wall was lined with collage prints of rocks, spliced and reassembled against white frames, their clinical finish resonating with the wider professional presentation of the show.

David’s walkthrough took the form of a relaxed, conversational exchange, shaped as much by those present as by his own reflections. This informality created a space that acknowledged artistic research, practice, and presentation as shared processes rather than fixed outcomes. The discussion brought together a diverse group, a Kielder walker, a poet, a photographer, a social health worker, each offering perspectives that illuminated Acting in the Middle from different angles. What emerged was not a hierarchy of interpretation but a dialogue where research interests overlapped, connected, and resonated. David seemed genuinely pleased with this sense of community, and for me it was a privilege to be part of such an exchange. As I reflected in my earlier blog on presenting at the RSA, these moments of data exchange are invaluable: they connect, support, and build networks that enrich everyone involved.

What, then, did I take away from the walkthrough? Beyond the pleasure of conversation across disciplines, it was the clarity and precision of the exhibition itself. The curation was slick and thoughtfully arranged, combining photography with sculpture and performative elements in ways that strengthened the research narrative. This, in turn, encouraged my own thinking about display strategies, something I am actively working towards in communicating my practice. Most importantly, David’s commentary gave depth to the work. He traced the many facets of the Kielder landscape: its histories of land and people, the current flows of visitors and their motivations, the impacts of tourism, and the ways these movements either disrupt or promote the landscape. He even drew attention to the demographics and clothing of those who visit, prompting questions about identity, class, and cultural framing. Through these layers, David outlined a shifting terrain, one shaped by memory, politics, and environmental change, and how it is now navigated through new cultural lenses. I left the exhibition with a sharpened sense that I am working within a rich, contested field, one with multiple avenues to pursue, and that David is contributing powerfully to its exploration.