Julie Read’s work is based on common but fascinating themes: ideas of existence; who we are and what makes us different from one another. This was the UK premiere of a new and varied show, seeing several media deployed - digital drawings, photography, computer animation - which intrigue and encourage the viewer to draw upon their personal interpretations and experience to fully engage in the work.

Digital drawings interpret various individual’s navel casts, delicate lines carefully follow the birth chord from where its cutting at birth marks the beginning of a new individual taking its first breath. The use of a ‘cold’ digital medium depersonalises the viewer from this very intimate area of the body, which in these drawings are explored as transparent layers which build up to the 3 dimensional form using tones that would correspond to the representation of topography of land on ordinance survey maps. This piece was extended in a twin projection work in gallery 2 showing computer animations of navels which move in and out with the breathing of the individuals.

Shown alongside these were photographs of embossed skin, describing the people whose navels are illustrated. The skin is embossed with information typically requested in passport applications, and the artist is interested in the notion that none of this information actually gives us a realistic indication of that person’s true identity.

This exhibition was a development of work shown at Kunstverein Rastatt - Pagodenburg, in Germany. ‘Existing Bodies’, a solo show by the artist, was exhibited at Street Level in 2000, and group shows include a number of Scottish and international exhibitions including ‘Regionale’ (Kunsthalle, Basel), Artists Association of Tuzla touring show (Tuzla, Zinice and Kalesija in Bosnia), Visual Arts Scotland (Royal Scottish Academy, Edinbrugh). The artist is based in Edinburgh and teaches at Edinburgh College of Art.

A 20 page full colour catalogue with an essay (in English and German) by Ruth Pelzer-Montada accompanied the exhibition.

A slideshow selection of images from the show together with documentation of the exhibition in situ.