Confessions of an art fair service worker

I’m at Frieze London, in the belly of the beast. My job here is not a complicated one: pour wine for guests who are happy to pay a king’s ransom for a glass of 2023 Viognier, and talk about grape varieties with men who are looking to flex knowledge they picked up on a private vineyard tour while holidaying in the Côte d’Or.

My journey to the venue is like every journey to an agency hospitality shift: without any real understanding of how long it’ll take to get there, and what the shift will be like once I do. On the Bakerloo line, I’m already able to identify which of my fellow riders are destined for Frieze based on what they are wearing and the way their eyes dart around the carriage to check if anyone is sneaking a peak at them.

Working on-and-off in hospitality since I was 15, I’ve seen it all. I’ve been on a wild conveyor belt of hospitality gigs – the civilised, the glamorous, the debauched, and the perfectly bizarre, working in some of the most popular events and restaurants in London serving Dua Lipa, David Cameron, the Duke of Edinburgh, and just about everyone else. When waitressing 50 hours a week, wiping up last night’s coke dust and fag ash first thing in the morning were as normal as taking out the bins. Often, I’d put myself up as the sacrificial lamb to clean the toilets, as it offered a moment of respite and personal reflection as I stared down into the pan of a toilet bowl.

I make great haste across the length of Regent’s Park and realise I am already breaking a sweat; my freshly-ironed clothes now creased and damp. As I maneuver past a blacked-out Range Rover dropping off VIPs, I am struck with panic that I must eat now as there may not be another chance. I down a sandwich and notice I’m in the eyeline of Helena Bonham Carter, who appears to be looking for whatever entrance the celebrities get to go in. I politely turn away so she doesn’t have to watch me eat. It must be tiring being a celeb at Frieze, having to wade through the rest of us sandwich-eating bosthoons. My humble start reaches its climax when I’m asked to empty my bursting backpack onto a table at security, revealing not a knife or can of soup with which to deface artworks, but instead a whole litany of tin-foiled snacks.

Inside, my comrades in this charade – the other barstaff – have already been working here for days and have resorted to various creative means to keep themselves stimulated, including a ‘bingo’ card of Frieze’s archetypal characteristics: ‘Cowboy hat’, ‘celeb’, ‘Cruella de Vil hair’, ‘sugar relationship’, ‘tooth bling’, are among those already crossed off. After an hour or so I’m able to add Mick Jagger, and a woman dressed head-to-toe in red under ‘thematic’. In another game, my co-workers walk around the fair in search of an artwork that best represented how they are feeling, and come back with photos on their phone of a candle almost burnt out, and what on first inspection looked like a turd splattered across a wooden slab.

I poured Roussanne for one couple as the husband complained about the price per glass. His wife turned and announced, “but you’ve just bought a £10,000 artwork!”, chortling to herself. Later, a guest is asked which glass of wine they’d like, to which they simply respond, “the most expensive”. It’s almost a match on last year, where during a private open-house event and without question or conversation, a guest placed the tail-end of their nibbled-on crab claw canapé directly into the palm of my hand.

Throughout the day, the bar becomes increasingly misidentified as a charging bay for devices, phones overworked from taking countless photos of art hanging on white walls and of people posing in front of them. One woman flies into rage at a co-worker after being told the plugs are needed for the tills, implying she is very important (but not important enough to bring her own battery pack).

Frieze stands out, not because it’s a parade of wealth and pomp, but because of its sheer concentration of it. There are more curated outfits parading those carpeted lanes than at London Fashion Week. Fluffy sleeved capes and stilettos, the velvet jacket over turtle neck combo, the land of the tinted aviators; it’s a world where even extremely long eyebrow hairs are styled as an accessory.

All kinds of people find themselves at Frieze, not just the art elite. There are those who painted the pictures or are pouring the Ruinart. There are also the clingers-on, influencers, socialites – more ‘party’ than ‘arty’. We’re in a large white temporary tent with some of the most expensive art you could fill your home with, but for some it’s all about being seen, and that my friend, is worth its weight in gold. After all, the week is just as much about the social display, as it is one of art and business, and with that comes a fascinating array of behaviours. “It’s hard to tell what is affectation and what’s someone’s actual personality”, my co-worker says to me, as we stare out onto the bustling expanse.

As a service worker, you get  special admission into the dirty underbelly of events. Behind every private dinner, there’s a fluorescently-lit back of house stacked with plastic boxes, dirty plates, fish skeletons and food scraps piled into bins, slippery floors, rodent traps and human beings, soiled with the remnants of your fine dining.

Looking around, Frieze is its own performance art piece; an incubator of rising talent and a platform for the most valuable – culturally and financially – art on the planet. You experience the glittering heights of human expression, in all it’s pomp and opulence. But when you work an art fair, you also get to see how, where, and by whom the sausage is made.

So next time I’m on the other side of the fence, I might just tap on the shoulders of its visitors – Robespierre-style –  and remind them not to lose their heads.