Iconic Offices seems like a fine place to do a day’s work. The company specialises in shared office spaces at a number of plush addresses around Dublin. “Workspace for rockstars,” its website says, and it’s easy to see why. Beams and pipes are mostly exposed; lots of naked glass gleams amid industrial metal frames; period rooms are filled with modernist furniture. There is even an office bulldog called Jackson, which the company says is its “director of fun”.
Iconic Offices has been running a competition for students of Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) and the National College of Art and Design (NCAD). It invited students to submit ideas for pieces, then drew up a shortlist of 20, whom it invited to spend two days creating the work at Iconic's Brickhouse office space, on Baggot Street, where a dedicated desk costs €449 a month plus VAT.
It will annouce the winners on Monday. Three prizes are on offer, of €2,000, €1,000 and €500, and the company will cover the cost of materials. The competition is being judged by Róisín Lafferty, founder and managing director of Kingston Lafferty Design; the urban artist James Earley; John Redmond, the creative director of Brown Thomas; and Joe McGinley, founder and chief executive of Iconic Offices.
So far, so standard. But what happens afterwards is typical of how the business world often treats the arts world. Iconic Offices says it will keep all the art on its walls. The three winners will get the cash, but all other entrants, after working for perhaps a week or more on a concept, the submission and the creation of an original piece, will get nothing. For €3,500 plus costs, Iconic Offices will get 20 original works of art by students at two of the best art colleges in the country.
Iconic Offices says it set up the competition to “showcase up-and-coming talent in Dublin” and that “some students are using this project as a submission piece for course assessment”. Each artwork, it says, will have a name plaque beside it, and the company will “profile the winners in the media and via our own social channels”. At the time of writing, Iconic has 738 followers on Twitter.
James Earley did not respond to requests for a comment. Ruth Barry, head of marketing at IADT, says the college views the contest as a "genuine benefit" that will give students "good first-hand experience of dealing with clients".
Sarah Harte, a spokesperson for NCAD, says that Iconic’s competiton was shared via noticeboards in the college. “While not actively encouraging engagement by students, the process of presenting ones work for competitions of this nature presents a valuable learning experience for emerging artists.”
Thankfully, everyone I speak to avoids the phrase “it will be good for exposure”, perhaps the most hated sentence in the arts world. There are, of course, better ways to run this sort of competition. Iconic Offices could pay for the work it insists on keeping. Or it could hold a competition based on the proposals, and commission the best works. Or it could, after a period of time, and having benefited from the art and the attendant PR, simply give back the artworks that is has not paid for.
The logic of this competition is depressing. It will also be familiar to any artist. Transport it to any other industry and no worker would ever agree to it. Imagine, for example, that I were to run a competition for building flexible workspaces. Imagine that I were to ask 20 people to make me the best office block they could, and I would cover their costs but not their labour. At the end of the competition I would give one or two a fair wage for their office blocks, but I would get to keep all 20. The rest of the builders would walk away with nothing.
This kind of behaviour is rife in the arts industries. Dublin band Bad Sea recently tweeted a snippet of an email from a festival promoter that ran along similar lines. The promoter asked the band to be “as considerate as possible when quoting us for the performance, given our current situation. Most acts last year played free of charge and we have over 20 acts already confirmed this year, the majority of which are willing to pay [sic] for free or for their expenses covered.”
Plenty of people work for free early in their careers, through freelance work or internships. The vital part of that bargain is that they gain valuable experience and mentorship or set themselves on paths that will build to more permanent positions. Many small arts organisations and festivals rely on people working without pay to keep the lights on and the show open. Iconic Offices does not appear to fit these descriptions. It says it is “Ireland’s leading flexible workspace provider”, an extremely competitive market, and it is planning to expand into the United States and the rest of Europe.
The Arts Council of Ireland insists that artists be paid for their work, a principle it has been more vocal about in recent years. Companies should afford artists the same respect they pay other workers or contractors. And if a company thinks art isn't worth paying for, then that company clearly isn't good enough to have art on its walls.
