A68

Boxed multiple exhibition

A68 is a collaboration between artists Jane Hyslop, David Faithfull, and poet Nicky Melville.

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.

Dalkeith is twinned with Jarnac, France, and the Palace is leased to Wisconsin University, where their study abroad programme is based. These international relations of the town will be investigated, to broaden the area’s connections and boundaries, in keeping with the saying that all the fences of the Duke’s lands would stretch across the Atlantic.

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.

Pantone 2725U - Dalkeith Estate Woods

 

Initial A68 project trip to Dalkeith Estate Woods.

The boxed multiple was exhibited at the International Print Conference Impact 8 in Dundee in August 2013.