The Whole and The Hole | Presented by Visual Arts Scotland SCIO.

Exhibition Dates: October 8-11 2026

Exhibition Location: Dalkeith Palace, Dalkeith Country Park, Dalkeith EH22 2NA

About the Exhibition

Visual Arts Scotland (VAS) presents The Whole and The Hole, a new exhibition of moving image works exploring the void of the hole. Opening this October at Dalkeith Palace, the exhibition offers an opportunity for moving image artists and film-makers to show their work.

Concept and Context

Henry Moore described 1932 as “the year of the hole,” when both he and Barbara Hepworth first began piercing their sculptures. Absence became form, void became volume and since then artists have continued to explore the paradox of the hole, emptiness that generates presence, negative space that defines matter. These apertures are not merely voids; they are intimate spaces, reminding us that the hidden interior can be as powerful and seductive as the outer surface.

“The Whole and the Hole” proposes that art’s most radical gesture may be the simplest: the act of cutting through. A gesture that continues to open new ways of seeing, feeling, and imagining, not only the object before us, but the invisible forces and relationships it frames.

The hole allows us to be seduced by the play of positive and negative, by the rhythm of shadow and light, by the ways that absence can feel as present as matter itself. “The Whole and the Hole” asks moving image and film artist to respond to the hole, whether this is carving absence into mass; connecting interior and exterior; seen and unseen spaces; a portal as a threshold to other realms; or a metaphor for wound, memory, or transformation.