ABSTRACT
The guided tour ended with a series of black and white photographs by contemporary Scottish photographer, Peter Cattrell. The structure of the tour – a guided discussion around a set of pre-determined artworks, already contextualized with 'blurbs' and additional notes from the curator, and involving a variety of orchestrated stops and starts – feels unnatural at times. When members of the group conduct a self-guided tour they usually do so in pairs. Volunteers from the group come to the gallery in their own time, choose works of art and carry out research on these in order to prepare to present them to the others. The other features of the tour – the walking, stopping, sitting, turning, pointing – or indeed, most tours involve groups of people rather than individuals, was never alluded to. The tour guides told me in interview that they received a form of 'training', often from the curator of an exhibition, prior to conducting a tour.
