A68 TALK AT THE SCOTTISH POETRY LIBRARY WITH JANE HYSLOP

A68

Boxed multiple exhibition

A68 is a dynamic print project involving artists David Faithfull, Jane Hyslop and writer nick-e melville, examining the boundaries and intersections, past and present, of the historic market town of Dalkeith. First mentioned in a charter of 1142, belonging to Holyrood Abbey, the town grew around the castle, which later became Dalkeith Palace and estate, owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, Europe’s largest landowner. All three contributors were brought up in the town, with the adjacent estate familiar to their pasts and central to the project’s heart.

The Duke’s Dyke, a wall which once completely surrounded the estate – where cultivated plants were given precedence over indigenous ones – is a potent symbol, now crumbling and controversially bisected by the Dalkeith bypass – the re-classified A68, historically the main road south, which was built alongside the Roman road into Scotland.

The trio will embark on field trips and research to explore tensions between the old enclosed spaces and the new ones, artificially created by the planners, investigating through image and text what is outside and ‘kept out,’ through physical and social separation and what lies inside these new microclimates. 

Faithfull and Hyslop will study the native and introduced flora, as well as the varied architectural boundaries. melville is interested in found texts and erasures, such as the re-routing of the old A68 and the demolition of the local high school. 

These borders and crossings will be explored through a range of methods including traditional and digital print mediums, exhibited as a boxed set of prints, artists’ books, writings and images, similar to Duchamp’s Green Box and Boîte-en-Valise - complex containers of works in various experimental forms and scales. The project’s collaborative investigations will visualise the invisible, creating images and texts to depict past developments and evoke the essence of the area now.