Tour Guide Profile: Julie Forrester

Name:
Julie Forrester.

Where are you from?
Born in Edinburgh, grew up in West Cork

What do you do at Crawford Art Gallery?
Tours, workshops and special interactions with all kinds of groups. Including online classes with cork migrant centre and the annual animation summer camps for children

What is your experience/qualifications?
MA Fine Art – practising artist, teaching artist

Why do you enjoy being a tour guide?
Art gives us other lenses to percieve the world i enjoy sharing the experience with others

Do you have a favourite artwork, exhibition or gallery space?
I love the gallery as a living being, recurring visits to its spaces and artworks is part of an evolving relationship, different at different times in different kinds of weather, i love the coloured light cast by Lonradh over the polished wooden stairs and the strange form of the Gibson Cabinet, its presence at the heart of the building. The Long Room with its Scrivenor’s past presenting an ever changing face from the collection, The Blue Lagoon of the Sculpture Gallery, the excitement and radical changes in the modern galleries with their unbalancing staircase leading on up to the open space above. I love the empty chamber of the turret and the curved wall of the top floor from the Harry Clarke Room past the soft inviting darkness of the viewing room on one side and the view to the bustling street on the other, i love the hidden sanctuary of the Library and the big tree space of the garden with its narrow wrought iron gate…

What are you special interests or something you always discuss on tours?
How art presents an encounter between our own living body and another kind of body each with its own history, agency and character.

Do you have any fun memories of tours to share? Perhaps a celebrity or a funny question you were asked?
On posing the question “what are we looking at?” In front of John Burke’s “Untitled” in the garden, its form birdlike from an adult’s point of view, from a child provoked the response “a trap”.  

Is there anything you’d like to say about working at Crawford Art Gallery that hasn’t been covered here? Feel free to share your comments or suggestions for questions here.
I am struck by the fondness the people of cork have for the gallery and i feel privileged to be a sometime contributor and visitor to it.