Everything I commission - whether it is for me or for a client's home or for a hotel or office - is absolutely unique to that job. I have everything made, or I find vintage and antique pieces at markets and auctions.

Is Amazon truly the best online buying experience? Absolutely not. Is eBay the best platform for auction? Probably not. Are dating sites like match.com really a reflection of the way people date? Probably not.

Nothing will teach you more about perceived value than taking something with literally no value and selling it in the auction format. It teaches you the beauty and power of presentation, and how you can make magic out of nothing.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

Now people look at 'The Scream' or Van Gogh's 'Irises' or a Picasso and see its new content: money. Auction houses inherently equate capital with value.

My first car I got it in an auction at my temple. It was an '86 Volvo that I got for 500 bucks and then wound up throwing $10 000 into the stereo system and put TVs in the foot rests. It was the most ridiculous Volvo you'd ever seen but I had never had money before and I was out of my mind.

I don't know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. I've gawked at the gaudy prices and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

Auction houses run a rigged game. They know exactly how many people will be bidding on a work and exactly who they are. In a gallery works of art need only one person who wants to pay for them.

A saboteur in the house of art and a comedienne in the house of art theory Lawler has spent three decades documenting the secret life of art. Functioning as a kind of one-woman CSI unit she has photographed pictures and objects in collectors' homes in galleries on the walls of auction houses and off the walls in museum storage.

I hate art auctions.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.