FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Stuff

My Time As a Security Boss for One of the World's Biggest Art Dealers

Basking in the rays of The Man with war criminals and stuck-up gallery girls.

The author letting the drunks into The Man's London gallery

People were usually impressed when I told them I was the security manager for one of the world's most famous and successful art dealers and gallery owners. It sounds like a cool job being surrounded by fantastic art and the characters who come with it. But others, who knew a little bit about the high-art game, did nothing but warn me about the guy we'll refer to as The Man. "That guy's darkside, you know," they'd say. Or: "He's the devil." I have seen one of the most successful artists on The Man's books making Satan's sign with his pinky and index fingers to members of the press. My favourite warning came in an email from a friend who, like me, has spent a long time in the Muslim world: "The art world is more dangerous and tribal than the Middle East," she wrote after hearing I'd landed the job.

Annoncering

My experience wasn't a glamorous one. The Man has incredible riches and influence at his disposal: a high priest whose galleries are designed to inspire near-religious reverence for the works on display. But what I quickly realised I'd come face to face with was the emptiness at the heart of it. Security guards at the gallery have a pretty unpleasant role. They stand in silence inside the quiet and often deserted rooms, staring at the walls, forbidden to sit down, for hours on end. They are the dumb waiters at the bottom of the art world's food chain.

In such an environment, thoughts tend to echo and magnify – you either think too much, or not at all. It's impossible to switch off or get lost in thought entirely however, because with nothing immediate to concentrate on, the mind inevitably returns to the pain in your feet. Just to add to the sense of orchestrated pointlessness, the director of the gallery told me at the interview that it wasn't really necessary to have so many guards. They were employed simply because they give the exhibits an impression of added value.

Welcome to the world of high art – where dealers bid on and buy pieces they already own at auction to boost value, and encourage their stables to make super-sized works with the sole intention of attracting super-sized prices. I knew these things before I took the job: I had previously worked a shift at the warehouse-sized gallery after a guard called in sick.

Annoncering

I was standing at the front door, sweating into a suit and tie in the summer heat, opening it for people who would glide past me like I was a fly-tipped mattress. I was hungover and bored, to the extent that when the opportunity came along to make things a little more interesting, a little more egalitarian, I was in the mood to take it, and waved through a gang of can-clutching pissheads. Come in and introduce yourself to the clinically bright white walls, the million-pound sculptures, the inscrutable, cold gallerinas, pissheads. Art should be for everyone. One of them tried to steal a book from reception, so there was the added benefit that for a brief moment the guards didn't feel completely redundant.

A year later, just after I returned to the gallery to begin my permanent stint as the security manager, I was rifling through the cupboard where all the keys are kept when I discovered a CCTV still of me letting the drunks into the gallery. My new bosses clearly had no idea it was me who'd welcomed them in, even though I was told it was the only trouble they'd had "in years". I guess that explained the CCTV printout.

I got to know my security colleagues quickly and soon realised that they possessed one of two qualities. Either they were soldier types, able to stand guard without question, or creative types, prepared to do something meaningless so they could dedicate themselves to what was their calling. "Colonel" Miles was very much the former; in 2000 he'd fled to Britain from Sierra Leone after fighting for the Revolutionary United Front during the civil war. He was muscular, fastidiously clean, whispered in a low croak and wore shoulder-length dreadlocks that made him look a bit like The Predator. In fact, he'd sometimes jokingly refer to himself as such, though not usually while he was recalling the years he'd spent in therapy for the atrocities he'd witnessed and committed.

Annoncering

One day I asked him how he'd ended up fighting for a group of war criminals as a teenager. "There's a little kid with a gun who can tell you what to do," he explained. "You get a gun and now he can't tell you what to do because you'll shoot him." I asked him if he ever went back to Sierra Leone. "No," he said. "Someone might recognise me and say 'You killed my mum' or 'You killed my dad.'"

The security team got drunk one night and the conversation turned to the weirdest thing we'd ever eaten. We took turns to answer, but when it came to Miles he said he couldn't tell us because "you wouldn't look at me the same". I said he would have to have eaten either shit or human flesh for us to do that. He said he couldn't tell because he'd made an oath with the "society" he belonged to. He refused to elaborate further. Everyone continued drinking and the conversation moved on. On the bus home I googled "cannibalism", "Sierra Leone civil war" and "Revolutionary United Front" in various combinations. Apparently sections of the RUF did eat people.

Adam, on the other hand, only ate shit. He was a short, blond, 40-year-old out-of-work actor with a permanently bloodshot left eye. He auditioned for adverts and TV bit parts. Dedicated to the craft, he had spent years at the gallery, despite hating the job. I once told him I admired his ability to stand the discomfort and tedium. He looked downcast for a second: "I don't," he replied.

Annoncering

Adam was likeable, and skilfully caricatured the ridiculously wealthy people who waltzed around the gallery, but was an easy target for bullying because he could not hide his insecurities. Forty-year-old men shouldn't get bullied, for all sorts of reasons, yet it seemed inevitable for him. He had been traumatised by boarding school, which his naval officer father had sent him to, and the infantile macho environment of the gallery made it seem like he had returned there. One role Adam got while I was working with him stuck in my mind. He was employed by a marketing agency to dress up as a bear and photobomb news crews filming live from outside the hospital where Prince George was born. I was reminded of the sad clown: laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

My role (which took about 5 per cent of the day to perform) was to keep the six-man security detail in line, handle requests or complaints from the gallery staff and ensure the security of the art and the building. I also had to keep the secretaries and gallerinas happy; they despised the guards because, although they looked good and could speak posh, they were only one rung above the likes of Miles and Adam on the pecking order. In turn, all of the guards hated the receptionists with the vehemence of people who have too much time on their hands. It was a poisonous relationship.

I got the position after my predecessor, a Brazilian ex-special forces agent, got sloppy. He had been fired for leaving an hour after he arrived in the morning, only returning to lock up the building at the end of the day. Like much at the gallery, success lay in the superficial – as long as I seemed tough, looked sharp, had enough control of the men to make sure they stood in a corner without complaint and was deferential to my superiors, it was a free and lucrative ride. I spent days reading and watching period dramas and detective shows on my laptop in the back corridor. I also gave myself an education in modern art from the gallery's library.

Annoncering

Despite the cushy number, I still had issues with The Man's synergistic vision of capitalism and beauty, and the obnoxious elitism it fosters. It was in part due to this that I found myself moving into a campervan and living around Hampstead Heath. I made the decision because I wanted to opt out of London's insatiable market culture in general; especially the high rents, but it suited the job. I got a kick out of working for the "Goldman Sachs of the art world", while secretly sleeping in the back of a converted works van and bathing and showering at Hampstead Heath's men's pond.

At first I kept my work outfit in the camper, stepping out in the morning like a proper city worker, but after a couple of weeks I left my suits and shirts at the gallery and got changed when I arrived. One school night I got pissed in central London and couldn't be bothered to go back to Hampstead. Instead, I slept in a park close to the gallery. I woke up when a fox began nibbling at my backpack, which I was using as a pillow. I shooed it off but it circled me and came back; I shooed it off again and got my head down once more. A couple of minutes later I heard a rustling in the flowerbed next to me. I propped myself up on my elbows to see what was making the noise: the fucker was crawling through the plants Viet Cong style for another attack. I decided to sleep on a bench.

My other attempt at bucking The Man's capitalistic raptures was to push for chairs. The Man is big, but the National Gallery is bigger and you don't see the guards there stood like turnips for hours on end. I told the general manager that anyone who wanted to damage the industrial sculptures then on display would have to bring an angle grinder – and an extension cord to plug it in. To steal them, they'd have needed a crane and a lorry.

Annoncering

The director, a tough but decent guy, was amenable and ordered eight folding stools. I was astounded. The guards, who knew the place better than me, refused to believe it. They were right to be sceptical. Fifteen minutes after the seats arrived, the curator took them away. It was the equivalent of stamping on a child's Christmas presents the minute after they'd been unwrapped. I asked him why and was told the chairs "spoiled the aesthetics". The Man's living reverie includes this belief: Aesthetics trumps pain, possibly even humanity. My colleague, a determined and charismatic singer in a prog rock band, responded to the news with: "I told you; it's like working for the Germans in World War Two." There are too many Jews in the establishment for a realistic comparison to the Third Reich, and I don't think The Man is quite a vampire squid of the Goldman variety – nor, as my friends attested, is he the devil. But a black hole monster stalks his shrine nonetheless.

It was a struggle to leave, because of the advantages that came with my position of responsibility. Despite having never seen The Man in person I was in thrall to him: paid well, free to pursue my own interests and, however insignificantly, part of something magnificent. But following The Man's sparkling vision of reality was like staring at the sun. If I had wanted to oversee people blindly performing roles that were harmful and demeaning, while obeying dubious orders from the upper classes, I'd have joined the army.

Annoncering

Still, I can't complain – for a while, I enjoyed basking in The Man’s rays.

Illustrations by Cei Willis

More strange personal histories:

I Was An Accidental Nigerian Film Star

The Time I Was Tied to a Pole by Congolese Soldiers

I Was an Embarrassing Viral Star and Didn't Like the Attention

The Time I Was an Extra On a TV Advert… On Acid!