Our Art
Look up from your pint
Pub art is usually meant to be unobtrusive. Something pleasant on the wall that sits quietly in the background and never gets a second look. Ours doesn't do quiet.
Everything on these walls comes from the personal collection of our owner, Matty, built up over years of happy obsession. It started when he was working in fashion and designed a collection with the artist Stuart McAlpine Miller.
What you're looking at
The collection is contemporary art with a street art influence. On the walls you'll find work by Tracey Emin, Stuart McAlpine Miller, Pure Evil, RYCA, Heath Kane, Babek Ganjei and Autistic Ian, among others.
The McAlpine Miller pieces come from his time as artist in residence at The Savoy in London, where he was chosen from over a thousand artists and spent months buried in the hotel's archives, painting the ghosts of its most famous guests. Those paintings hung in one of the grandest hotels in the world. Now they hang in a pub in Epwell, which we think they rather enjoy.
The black framed photographs dotted around the place are all from the set of the upcoming remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, directed by and starring Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan. A film about a man who steals great art, watching over a room full of it. We couldn't resist.
And there are one or two pieces we're deliberately not naming. If you think you've clocked something by a certain anonymous artist with a fondness for stencils, well. We couldn't possibly comment. Come and have a proper look.
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: AUTISTIC IAN
The man who draws from memory
Every piece of art in this pub has a story, but none quite like Ian's.
Ian, who works as Autistic Ian, didn't speak until he was five. He communicated by drawing instead, filling an old diary with pictures so his dad could understand what he needed. That was the start of it all, and Ian eventually ended up at the Royal College of Art, where he famously completed the work for his degree in just nine days.
Then life took him somewhere else entirely. Twenty years in advertising, a big job, a big house, the lot. And then, in 2012, a catastrophic breakdown took all of it away. Ian spent two years sleeping rough on the streets of Soho.
The way back began in a coffee shop. Ian found a pen and some crayons a child had left behind, and a newspaper with a photo of the chef Tom Kerridge on it. So he drew him. He sent the picture to Kerridge's wife Beth on a donated phone, pawned a necklace to buy proper materials, and she bought his work the very next day.
Since then Ian has become the artist the best chefs in the world go to. Gordon Ramsay has his work at home and his art is featured in some of the best restaurants in the world. When Trivet and Brooklands won their stars, it was Ian they asked to paint the celebration.
His paintings are loud, joyful and completely alive, which tells you everything about the man.