Summerhall in Edinburgh (festival Fringe venue 26), was for a century the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.  Ingrid Christie has photographed the site and derived a large series of potent images, many of which are now on show at Summerhall. They tie in with several major themes in her artworks.  One is making cross-cultural connections between philosophical and spiritual beliefs alongside the biological facts of humans and other animals.  She is also interested in the semantics of medical terminology which she playfully manoeuvres from the original meaning by alternating with self- made and appropriated imagery; often with a bitter sweet twist of irony. These themes are addressed in two video installations that represent disparate ends of the artist’s scale from the poetic to the clinical.  In a series of collages she uses biomorphic shapes which melds animals with humans, and animals with other animals. These are most often fused with pages from 20th century encyclopedias, highlighting just how transitory human certainty can be.

She highlights questions about the biological identity of humankind along with the zoology of kindred species, that over time is becoming better understood and reaching points of fusion via technology and clinical advances. The inter-dependency and cultural identity between mankind and other animals has had a social, cultural and biological history since the first homo sapiens. ‘It’s a mixed up, muddled-up, shook up world’ – The Kinks, 1970