Working Art

I have been working at a gallery invigilating this week. Yes, this is the same gallery I worked at as a grad student in London. I had reapplied a few months ago when they were hiring 30 people and wasn't even shortlisted. I later learned 700 people applied. Such is the current job situation in London.

Despite this I found out through the grape vine they were having trouble filling shifts. I called and now I am working odd shifts here and there - as much or as little as I like. Conveniently it is very close to my studio. What is interesting is that I now find myself sitting in rooms full of very avant-garde, post-modern sculpture, the kind that I don't actually understand (and as a result have a hard time appreciating). Perhaps this is my chance to engage it and try to understand where art has come from to bring it to this present day work. The gallery is a large historical gallery that consists of 9 main rooms, an auditorium, cafe, restaurant, archives library, and book shop. I spend a half hour in each room rotating around with other staff. One of my favourite rooms is a display of early purchases made by the British Council of now well known artists. The pieces were bought early in their careers and the prices they were bought at are shockingly low when viewing their careers nowadays. A Damien Hirst dot painting (right) was bought for £8500 in 1994 (one of the most expensive aquisitions in the show). This is the artist who made headlines at the beginning of the current recession for having sold £111 million at a single auction. Some of the paintings were particularly striking. I was most riveted by Frank Auerbach's painting, The Camden Theatre (below). It sold in for £1800 in 1976. Some works sold for as low as £54. An early Lucien Freud sold for only £157. It all seems rather inspiring. The impression I have always had in London is that these stars were stars while still doing their graduate work at school and they then easily stepped on the fast train to mega-success as soon as they graduated. I don't know how that translates to my own practice, but I was left feeling really good about my own art.