As The Bun House closes forever, Tom Jeffreys pays a final visit.
Friday 27th January 2012 is the end of an era. The Bun House – home to undoubtedly Peckham's finest pub and arguably its most interesting contemporary art space – is closing its doors for the final time. The building is being sold, the developers are moving in. It's begun: The Taking of Peckham 1. 2. 3.
After Mick, the pub's supremely hospitable landlord for over twenty years, was given little choice but to accept the offer he was given by the developers, the only fight left is over the building's characterful façade. On behalf of the mysteriously low-profile Saki Services, CGMS Consulting have filed an application to install a new shop-front for what will most likely be a chain coffee shop beneath a bunch of bland flats (Mick still holds the liquor license so whatever replaces the Bun House it won't be a pub). The Peckham Society has lodged objections, but hope is slim.
Which is a shame, as it is a lovely façade Built in 1898 and originally known as the Peckham Refreshment Rooms before becoming a bakery (hence the name) and then a pub, its distinctive scarlet panels and leaded bay windows are something of a landmark on the otherwise rather unattractive Peckham High Street. On the night I pay my last visit, two days before it shuts its doors for the final time, the Bun House's charming exterior is also adorned with a handwritten sign that reads, entertainingly, “Regulars Only”.
“We were the third gallery to open in Peckham as far as I'm aware,” says Francis Thorburn once I'm safely settled inside with a pint of John Smiths (the ales are off). Along with Craig Dow, Francis runs The Bun House, the experimental project space in a room at the back of the pub that opened back in October 2008 with a kind of retrospective for notorious corgi-eater Mark McGowan (Francis' tutor when he was at nearby Camberwell College). Since then, they've put on all manner of exhibitions, mostly solo shows, for a range of cutting edge artists, from the increasingly established like Littlewhitehead and Olaf Brzeski to students straight out of Goldsmiths. As Francis explains, the ethos always been about “giving younger artists an experimental space that's not too pretentious or lofty.”
The result is a space that's pretty much unlike any other gallery in London. As Craig observes, “it's an old pub, it's not a white-walled gallery in the West End. It allows artists a bit of breathing space to do something different.” And over the years both Craig and Francis have always looked to take on artists who are keen to push their practice in new directions, to experiment. 
But it's not just the unique space that artists have had to contend with. Initially suspicious of the “piss artists” in the back of their pub, the locals gradually warmed to what Craig and Francis were doing. From advice on re-painting the space to giving their honestly expressed feedback, many of the pub's locals have played their part in making the Bun House so special. As Francis says, "they're more forthcoming with their opinions and more thoughtful than a lot of the 'art' people who come in!”
Craig laughs: “Oh yeah, if they don't like it they let you know. And it challenges the artist as well, because it's real. They realise that they have to show their work to real people. I think it's really good for the artists – it's a good challenge to have.” In an art world polarised between a high-end that's cut off from any concept of 'public' and a publicly funded dependence on diversity quotas, it's a rare challenge too. As Francis notes pithily: “this is art in a community, rather than art for a community.
But now it's all coming to an end. “Peckham's a new, up-and-coming, trendy area,” Craig says. “There's ten to fifteen galleries here now.” What's happened to Hoxton and Shoreditch, and to Dalston, is now happening to Peckham too. It's the inevitable process of gentrification. As somebody from nearby gallery The Sunday Painter put it on South East Central: “tragically a lot of artist projects actually hasten there own demise through their practices making areas seem more exciting and culturally rich.” Craig agrees: “We've kind of shot ourselves in the foot. But that's London.”
It's not the first time this has happened. The pair were forced out of their studios in Area 10 a couple of years back, after the council decided that the building, just across the road on Peckham Square, was structurally unsound. “They slapped a note on the door, changed the locks and gave us three days to leave.” Unsurprisingly, as they look to the future, Craig and Francis are looking outside of Peckham to set up their new venue, which will expand their operation whilst maintaining the spirit of both the Bun House and Field, their organisation for residencies and large-scale group shows.
The closure is not only a local loss or a loss to the art world, but also symptomatic of the malaise that has struck down Britain's pubs over the last twenty years or so. Between 1980 and 2010, the number of pubs in the UK has gone down from 69,000 to 52,000, with 35% of those closures coming after the smoking ban in 2007. The smoking ban is one problem, the rapacious, asset-stripping strategies of the pubcos another. Their techniques include enforcing their restrictive 'beer ties', clinging on to the discredited Brulines beer-monitoring system, and claiming 60% of takings from the fruit machines (the pub, after tax, gets just 28%). Mick, the genial landlord, joins us for a drink, saying, sadly, “it's a dying trade, the pub trade.”
The demise of the Bun House is sensitively explored in the gallery's final exhibitions. The pub itself features work by Rachael House, inspired by the charmingly named Fat Boy of Peckham – Johnny Trunley – born in the same year that the Bun House was built. In the back room is Timo's Kube's nuanced Tracing Reflection. Utilising a range of more or less reflective surfaces, the show is a site-specific installation that, in its relative slickness of finish, represents a kind of apotheosis for the Bun House: in particular, an elegant mirrored sculpture on the roof (accessible via a rickety iron ladder). Supported by an array of pulleys attached to the surrounding buildings, the effect is to pull them inwards, to locate the Bun House at the centre of a complex matrix of social, economic and geographic relationships. A centre that is now to be knocked out.
On my way out I look left, and wonder what will happen to this area. “And life's just a bowl of cherries, for the fruit machine.” The Taking of Peckham. 1. 2. 3.
All images: © Mariona Otero
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