I was terrified of art for years. Then I got a job in a gallery.
People are exclusionary. Art doesn't have to be.
My first ever job in London involved standing for hours upon end looking at Basquiat paintings.
There were other parts to the job, of course, like serving actual human customers, but there was also a lot of looking Basquiat paintings. If you were to ask me when I was younger where I was least likely to end up working, anything to do with art would have been top of the list. I hated - no, was terrified of - art class.
I hadn't always been afraid of art. Aged 7 I developed a special interest in Kandinsky and had his artwork of concentric circles hanging on my bedroom wall. I spent hours doodling imaginary townscapes like Klee because I found the shapes exceptionally calming. And then, Secondary School happened.
Aged 11, I was kept behind after my first term of art by my teacher. She was a stern, sharp woman with an annoyingly shrill voice. I had written in my termly reflections that - given we had just spent 6 weeks learning that art is subjective and that there is no such thing as good or bad art - how come we were being graded? It wasn’t a slight at my teacher, I genuinely couldn’t understand the hypocrisy. I still don’t. She shouted at me a lot that afternoon until I was nearly crying. That was it: I hated art. I was scared of it, scared of being humiliated either because I didn’t make work that was up to scratch but moreover that if I wanted to express what I genuinely thought, it would be seen as insolence.
In hindsight, I think she kept me behind because she thought I wasn’t bothering to try and then had the cheek to defy her. I can see her logic; my work was really, really messy. It looked like I’d half-arsed it. In reality, I genuinely didn’t understand the contradictions and although I was trying really, really hard, my hands don’t do what my brain asks them to do. My ability to visualise and then make something is almost non-existent. It’s the same reason it took me till I was thirteen to learn to tie my shoelaces. We didn’t know I was autistic, then, but if we did it might have explained why fine motor skills like handwriting or colouring neatly or sewing and even eating with cutlery are almost impossible.
It took almost seven years for me to feel comfortable admitting I even liked art, let alone that it might be helpful for me, or that I might - heaven forbid - enjoy it. By the time was in Sixth Form I would eventually start sneaking down to London to wander around museums; galleries were the natural progression. Being a classicist at heart, there’s very little I can’t tell you about Graeco-Roman sculpture or mythological and historical references which I guess gave me an ‘in’.
I was always surprised by what I liked John Constable’s painting Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds was one of the first paintings that I was drawn to. I’d like to say it was because of the colours and textures, but it was mostly because it looked like a scene from The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe.
Jobs in the heritage sector where I aspired to work for a long time were few and far between but part-time and casual gallery jobs seemed to be abundant. I got the first job I applied for and spent the best part of three years working at the Barbican.
Basquiat was the first exhibition I worked on and according to my then colleagues, that first eidiculously busy experiences they could remember. I just thought it was a normal influx of visitors into a London gallery. Ashamedly, what I learned about most during that particular exhibition was handbags. I don’t really believe in the concept of handbags, but when you’re trying to locate them in a busy cloakroom, it helps if you can describe the brand, the leather, the hardware, style.
I got to spend time surrounded by art and writing. Modern Couples was a particular highlight, not least because it featured not only what I affectionately referred to as the ‘round room of lesbians’ and one of my favourite paintings by queer Polish artist Tamara De Lempicka. It’s also where I learned the word phantasmagorical, though I rarely have use for it in my day-to-day parlance. The exhibition also introduced me to the word phantasmagorical, which I really need to find more excuses to use in my day-to-day parlance.
Another Kind Of Life featured photography of people on the margins of society in some way; in theory that is right up my street, but I found it unpalatable the way artists who were not part of the groups pictured seemed to make a spectacle out of difference. I was fortunate to spend days surrounded by art created by women, which shouldn’t be remarkable but still is, sadly. I feel like everyone could benefit from hearing Lee Krasner speak about her work for a few hours.
The ideas which popped into my mind in the gallery were always ephemeral. I rarely had anything to write on besides my own hands. Whenever I spoke to friends, they would say they couldn’t do what I did: stand for many hours a day in mostly silence with no phone surrounded by brutalist architecture. I miss the brain space I had in that job, the freedom to just exist in my own head without much input from people or the world. I used to often reflect on how the world could be ending and I literally wouldn’t know because a huge concrete structure is actually a pretty safe place to ride out armageddon if you think about it.
One shift I might start composing a musical about a queer community group in a small town, the next I’d be thinking about how I’d adapt the Aeneid for the small screen. I can’t help but laugh at the fact I thought I wasn’t creative for so long when my brain was bubbling with so many ideas and I was writing so prolifically. I know some of my colleagues grew weary with the artwork over time, though granted they’d been doing the job a lot longer than I had. Art, for me, is a kind of magic. Words, I can do. Ideas and development I can do. Making things? That’s beyond me. It’s a kind of witchcraft as far as I’m concerned.
I never knew my last shift would be my last. The pandemic hit, I graduated from university and by the time galleries reopened I had left London. I have been to probably every other gallery and museum space, but I still haven’t been back to the Barbican gallery. I know I should, just for old times’ sake if nothing else.
I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had never worked there: would I still feel like art wasn’t for me? Almost certainly. Would any of this have been necessary if a judgement hadn’t been made about me when I was still a child? Probably not. Am I making up for those years I felt like art wasn’t for me now? Absolutely.
I love how you describe the space it gave you and your brain to be creative. When I travel galleries are one of my favourite places to just be. I used to go to the National Portrait Gallery a lot when I lived in London, it made me feel safe, protected.