‘I bet you’re so pleased to get this. The opportunities are so… limited up there.’ She’s looking at me like I clawed my way here out of a fucking coal mine. ‘What year did you finish at CSM?’
‘2012.’
‘I was at the Slade for undergrad about the same time you were at the RCA then! 2014?’
‘Good for you.’
I used to laugh at people from the Slade. They’re all a bit like this. I used to call it the Suh Lar Day, in a faux posh accent whenever someone told me they went there.
Jamie closes her laptop when the film is done.
‘I’m so excited to show this. And I love the photos as well.’
‘Yeah, I’d better go get on with hanging, actually,’ I say.
‘Oh, someone will do that for you, darling.’
‘Yeah,’ I say, with a tight smile. ‘I know, I meant… to direct it.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Well, I mean… I’m curating, obviously. It’s not like a uni show, or a solo show. Everything has already been decided. You can watch, though, I mean…’ Jamie shuffles in her desk chair. ‘I suppose you can make some suggestions about the placement of the photos, if you have any.’
‘Sounds good. I’ll go down now, then, yeah?’
‘If you like,’ she says.
Sera is downstairs. Her work is on the first floor, but I find her walking the ground, watching a man hang my photographs.
‘That one is really grotty,’ she calls to me. ‘I love it.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Excited to see the film, too! I thought you’d kind of dropped out of filmmaking.’
‘I had but…’ I shrug. ‘Jamie said they wanted a film to show, so I made one.’
‘You’re showing a film and photographs?’ says a little boy. He’s dressed like an eastern European crackhead circa 1997, so I’m going to assume he’s someone’s assistant. ‘That’s not fair. I wanted to show a film, but Jamie said the only person showing a film was Cam.’
‘You’re in the show?’ Sera says. We exchange a look.
‘Obviously,’ he says. With me. On the same floor. He points to his work, some stuff in the corner I hadn’t even noticed. A few cork noticeboards and a piss load of Polaroids pinned to them, of what could be the same skinny naked white girl over and over again, or could be several skinny white girls. Some of them are tied up, so I guess that’s why it’s fetish art? ‘I’m Remy Hart?’ he says, like we’re supposed to know. Sera and I look at each other again. They’re not good photos. He clearly hasn’t kept his film refrigerated – they’re already sun damaged, with extra little pinholes where they’ve been hung elsewhere before. He’s hanging them right by the door, too. They’ll be bleached to shit by next week.
He walks over to my photos. Only one has been hung, so far. A photo of Eddie from Tesco’s bruised backside, with the offending wine bottle wedged between his cheeks. They’re all a little over a metre long, all in portrait. The other five are stacked, waiting to be hung. The boy creeps behind me, and hovers. I know he’s there, because I can hear his tracksuit.
‘Six? They’re letting you have six?’ He snorts. ‘Who even are you?’
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I didn’t even know we could bring work this big,’ he says. ‘I’m so fucked off. This is so unfair. Like, who is she?’ he asks Sera, and points at me, sticking his finger right in my face. I slap his hand.
‘I’ll go and get Jamie,’ Sera says. She’s sniggering as she walks away.
‘I’m going to call my uncle, and there’s nothing Jamie can do about it!’ he shrieks after her.
Cute: he’s shy enough about his privilege to cosplay as someone picking up methadone from a pharmacy on Shields Road at twelve-thirty on a Tuesday, but not so shy he won’t scream about how big his uncle’s dick is in front of professional colleagues.
I get a closer look at him while he furiously stabs at a brand-new iPhone XS and waits for his uncle to pick up. He’s white （shock）， and we’d have to guess straight, from the skinny lassies in the photographs. He is dripping in retro sportswear, each article of clothing a different brand, and dreadfully well spoken. He’s wearing round, ultra-trendy glasses, and an ugly toothbrush moustache.
I wonder, what do charvas in London wear now? Now that their whole craic has been gentrified. Full suits? Quirky tweed? Joy Division shirts? Is goth the new chav? I’m genuinely interested.
I look for his exhibition text – he’s getting a little card. I’m getting something printed right onto the wall.
Remy Hart. Born 1995, UK, Hertfordshire
Polaroid Collections 1, 2, 3, 2018
Little Home Counties prick. I bet daddy is a banker, and mummy has a column in the local paper. I bet they moved out of the city before he was born, to make sure he grew up safe and sheltered and racist in a constituency where everyone votes Tory but pretends that they don’t. I bet everyone shops at Waitrose and has a gilet and wellies and weirdly strong opinions on fracking.
On the phone, he’s asking why some woman he’s never heard of has space for large-scale work and a film. He asks why his work has been placed next to mine – but it’ll distract from my piece, I’ve been shoved next to the door – she has a whole wall – who even is she?
I point to where they’ve got my name and my bio on the wall. I give him a thumbs up.
It’s almost as if life isn’t fair, Remy. It’s almost as if it’s not fair that you’re in this show at all. His work is very first year of uni, honestly – I wonder where he went? Did his ego deflect any useful crit he got, or did he just… not turn up. He wouldn’t have even gotten away with this shit at CSM （home of pictures of skinny white girls and their nipples） while I was there, and I’m surprised boys like this still exist. Still this entitled, still this generic, still this wealth of privilege and connections filling a void where there should be talent. I blame the adjusted uni fees for this shit.
I’m so angry I can feel it in my cunt; muscles twinging, balling up like a fist. My acrylic nails are digging into the meat of my palms. I could slap his phone out of his hand and stamp on it. I could slap him. I could yank his fucking Umbro cap off and stuff it in his mouth.
I don’t need to slap his phone from his hand, because he throws it at my photograph – the one they’ve hung. He damages the glass on the frame.
‘What the fuck.’
‘This isn’t fucking fair,’ he squalls. ‘Jamie. Where the fuck is Jamie? I want to be moved. I want more space.’
My acrylics are filed to a point – I could drive them into his eyeballs. I could run across the room, and I could drive my fingers into his eyes, or into his neck and pull out his throat.
I just spit in his face instead. He squeaks, and a moment later Jamie and Sera arrive on the ground floor.
‘Oh, what the fuck, Remy?’ Jamie whines. He storms out, wiping his face.
I recount the story, down to me spitting at him, because I don’t need to lie about it, （‘You spat at him?’） and I demand he’s removed from the exhibition. He hasn’t fucking earned it, anyway. He doesn’t even have a Masters, and I went to the fucking RCA. You don’t just get to mince out of fucking uni into fucking Hackney fucking Space.