An Internship of Fools – An Assistant's Anecdote

An anonymously submitted anecdote from a subversively minded gallery assistant

I was at one time working as an assistant at a certain London gallery, which although allowing me to develop my experience in certain areas and providing me with a number of useful contacts was essentially not seeking to teach me anything above or beyond the work that would and could have been carried out be a paid, permanent employee. Essentially I was working for them as any other employee would, only for free. Through this I was inevitably picking up various contacts or developing certain areas of knowledge but essentially the internship label that was placed on the position was slightly disingenuous.

It often seemed as though my boss would simply refer tasks to me that she herself was unwilling to carry out herself as they were tiresome or menial, or that she was unwilling to pay someone for that should in all fairness have been the preserve of qualified web designers, couriers, graphic designers, and more worryingly builders and electricians. Despite being unpaid I would have to travel at my own expense, not only to work but to meetings and to make deliveries and collections. The worst parts were often having to impose what I held to be unfair terms on fellow artists or to be drawn into confrontation with them as a means for her to avoid such unpleasantries. I was also beginning to have to undertake much more work outside of my allotted time at the gallery, spending countless hours of what was supposed to be my free time (all time is 'free' time when you are not paid right?) typing away bitterly on the computer, posting stuff to blogs and the like. I was even being asked to sacrifice other opportunities for the promise of a possible (although I quickly accepted fantasy) job at the end of it all.

In light of my developing awareness of the exploitative nature of this arrangement I began to seek to turn this position to my own ends by potentially more underhand means. I began to subvert my position somewhat, partly for the furtherance of my career (contacts and experience) and partly simply for my own entertainment. It became a creative act in itself. I was lucky in so much as I had some level of apparent autonomy within my position and so when presented with the opportunity to produce an exhibition with a large amount of responsibility for the discourse that surrounded it, I chose to subvert the concept of the exhibition into one that subtly commented upon my own position within the organisation and contained multiple and ironic references to, and critiques of, the exploitative situation in which I found myself. What was ostensibly an exhibition showcasing the early career positions of emerging artists became to the observant reader a hidden critique of the whole way this 'employment' scenario was set up and the ways in which young creative practitioners/interns are treated by institutions. I am not sure if anyone reading the material that I wrote picked up on the multiple signs that I placed within my work or possibly noticed my little joke, I like to think they did and that they are still laughing a little to themselves, perhaps even now.