Focus on: Bermondsey

Focus on: Bermondsey

29 March, 2012
by: Tom Jeffreys

Tom Jeffreys takes a stroll round the galleries of another London area. This time, the focus is on Bermondsey.

The area
Poor old Bermondsey. This delightful area, just a short stroll from London Bridge Station, was quietly minding its own business, gently gentrifying in its own rather charming fashion, when suddenly, in October 2011, the third branch of Jay Jopling's White Cube plonked its bad self down amid a frenzy of media coverage and hipster-filled bus-trips from Hackney. The opening night of the biggest commercial gallery in Europe saw queues of hangers-on right down the length of Bermondsey Street, with several bouncers needed to hold back the hordes.

White Cube's arrival was accompanied coincidentally by a spate of new restaurant openings, especially on Bermondsey Street, which is now home to José Pizarro's brilliant tapas bar, José, and more formal restaurant, Pizarro, as well as Italian favourite Zucca which opened back in 2010. On the food-front, the area is also home to Maltby Street market – a kind of break-away from nearby Borough – that is abuzz with fashionable foodies on the Saturday I visit. Definitely worth stopping by for a Reuben from Monty's Deli, some ice-cream from La Grotta and a coffee from Has Beans (don't bother queuing for Monmouth – you'll be there all day).

Art-wise, and these days, the area is home to a broad range of arts venues, from commercial galleries to institutions like the Design Museum (relocating to Kensington High Street in 2014) and Zandra Rhodes' eye-popping Fashion and Textile Museum, as well as more experimental project spaces (like Underdog Arts on Crucifix Lane and Café Gallery Projects – way over east in Southwark Park). One to look out for is the strange Jacob's Island (thanks to Ingrid Reynolds at George and Jorgen for the tip-off), housed in a semi-domestic space behind a pine-green door on Shad Thames. One to miss is Vibe Gallery, although the industrial estate that houses it is impressive. Part of the reason for all this variety is the high concentration of artist studios, encouraged by support from the admirably pro-art Southwark Council.

Unsurprisingly, where there's art there's regeneration. And Bermondsey has plenty of that – a prime example being the beautiful Alaska Building (designed by Wallis Gilbert of Hoover Building fame), which is now apartments, gated off from the prying public. Jamaica Road in particular is about to change dramatically, with two massive developments currently on the go – one entitled, in typically ghastly fashion, Revitalise¹⁶ (SE16 geddit?). And of course the whole area is, like so many others across London, constantly in the shadow of the Shard.

How times have changed. Bermondsey – its strange name dating back to Old English and scoring a mention in the Domesday Book of 1086 – last rose to prominence on the art scene back in 1997, courtesy of Alex Chappel and David C West. Their consistently controversial gallery took its name from its location on Decima Street, just round the corner from where White Cube is now, and saw the pair stage a whole host of media-baiting art stunts like Fuckart & Pimp, during which a female artist claimed to be producing paintings whilst having sex with clients. Other notable shows at Decima Gallery included Was Jesus a Homosexual? for which Gilbert and George doctored the inscription on a hundred-year old fountain to read “Jesus said let him come”. Tee hee.

With White Cube currently hosting a massive exhibition of Gilbert and George's London Pictures across all three London gallery spaces, it seemed like a rather apt moment for a wander.


See our Focus on Bermondsey map in full.

The walk
The Bermondsey walk gets under way in bright sunshine, with a trip to Bermondsey newcomers George and Jorgen. Previously located just behind the Regent Street Apple store, George and Jorgen moved south to an old office building at the start of March. I'm lucky enough to catch the tail-end of their first exhibition in the new space, a solo show for hotly tipped young abstract painter Chris Baker. It's now finished – which is not much help to those of you planning on following my route – but their next show – sexually suggestive work by collaborative duo Paddy Gould and Roxy Topia – opens on the 30th March. Set up by George Barker and Ingrid Reynolds, George and Jorgen is fun, innovative, refreshingly lacking in artspeak twaddle, and alive with a bold, DIY energy: exactly the kind of gallery London needs.

Outside, it's a right past José's stash of delicious sherries and down the chicly bohemian Bermondsey Street. Take a left under an unmarked, green-peeling arch, where you'll find Poussin Gallery tucked away behind a buzzer and a heavy metal door. Inside is an exhibition of works produced between 1959 and 1980 by Garth Evans. This kind of formal abstract Modernism is Poussin's stock in trade, and on this evidence they're very good at it. Evans' work has an architectural formalism about it as well as an appreciation of the rigorously systematic: my favourite piece is a blueprint for a 1970s floor sculpture depicted on now-yellowing graph paper in a range of bright colours, lines and barely legible annotations.

From here, it's on to the big one: White Cube. I have to say the Gilbert and George show does nothing for me, but Alex Chappel (of Decima fame) has written eloquently about it elsewhere on Spoonfed. But the space, my lord, the space is incredible. From the gentle motion of the huge glass doors to the perfectly polished floor and the industrial ceiling grill housing row upon row of zinging neon striplights: everything is finished to the very highest standards. Vast, imposing, starkly beautiful – it's like some kind of great industrial tomb, boundless and bare. The art boom of the 1990s apotheosised in this wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command.
 
Back into the sunlight, and continue down to the bottom of Bermondsey Street, crossing diagonally left over Long Lane to Bermondsey Square, home both to Gregg Wallace's recently opened and critically mauled restaurant, Gregg's Table, and to Vitrine Gallery, our third port of call. Vitrine Gallery is, to put it simply, a window. Set up in 2010, it consists of a sixteen-metre long ground-floor window space that's currently home to a performance/installation by Leah Capaldi. 'Prop' involves the artist balancing on a series of objects whilst surrounded by DIY paraphernalia like hammers, brushes, paints and pots of pollyfiller. On the press spiel Capaldi states that “Vitrine's space is all about observing and being observed”. This may be true in theory, but on a beautiful day in a relatively busy square, I'm conspicuously the only person paying any attention. I'd like to say it's a shame, but that would be stretching it.

It's now a little bit of a trek to our next stop. Head down the increasingly ugly Tower Bridge Road and hang a left at the roundabout down New Kent Road (which rapidly turns into the Old Kent Road). Keep your eyes open and after a hundred yards or so turn left up an unmarked road called Mandela Way. You'll know it's the right one because straight ahead of you is the gun barrel of a decommissioned army tank – a Soviet T-34-85 to be precise. This is one of the hidden gems of Bermondsey, and right now it's covered in a host of multicoloured graffiti scrawls, one of which says, amusingly, “Don't fuck with my tank”. On the day I visit, it's also being used as a backdrop for a student film – a “post-apocalyptic childhood romance” apparently. Students, huh.

Continue in the same direction and on to our final destination. Established in 2002 and part-funded by the Arts Council, The Drawing Room is Europe's only public, not-for-profit gallery devoted entirely to contemporary drawing. Previously based in Hackney, the Drawing Room is now located on the incredible Rich Estate, along with sister company Tannery Arts and Bow Arts Studios – just a short walk from the tank past the cute terraced houses of Page's Walk. The huge ex-industrial space is currently showing an exhibition devoted to the work of Franz Erhard Walther. It's a quiet, thoughtful and nuanced exhibition, and probably the highlight of a really rather delightful day, down in Bermondsey.

Bermondsey Facts
Eat: Pizarro, Zucca, Maltby Street
Drink: José, St James Tavern, The Victoria
Stop: Has Beans, Monmouth

Image credits left to right: pixelhut; yurri

See our map of Bermondsey in full.

Updated January 2013.

  
More Spoonfed Guides:

London's best late night restaurants
Spoonfed's guide to karaoke
13 Things to look forward to in 2013
Do Something Different: workshops, courses and games

Tom Jeffreys