Panel Discussion: Friends in Conversation

Join co-curators Melanie Pocock, Ikon, and Marilou Laneuville, macLYON, alongside artists Tereza Bušková, Delaine Le Bas and Fabien Verschaere, for a panel discussion exploring friendship. This event is organised in response to Ikon’s exhibition Friends in Love and War – L’Éloge des meilleur·es ennemi·es.

The panel discuss how the theme of friendship has influenced their artistic practices and curatorial ideas – this includes the artists’ residencies which have formed part of the exchange. Curated collaboratively, the exhibition illuminates the many faces of friendship to form a nuanced depiction of this vital human relationship. It also reflects on diplomatic alliances, as the presentation takes place in the partner cities of Birmingham and Lyon.  

This exhibition is supported by the British Council and is presented as part of UK/France Spotlight on Culture 2024 Together We Imagine, with additional support from Fluxus Art Projects and Birmingham City University.

About the speakers

Melanie Pocock, Artistic Director (Exhibitions), Ikon, leads on the gallery’s exhibition programme, publications, and, with the wider team, off-site projects. Pocock joined Ikon in 2020 and has curated exhibitions including a major presentation of performance art by Indonesian artist Melati Suryodarmo (2023); Horror in the Modernist Block, an exhibition of work by 20 UK and international contemporary artists exploring the relationship between architectural modernism and horror (2022-23); and off-site projects including artist Hew Locke’s city-centre installation Foreign Exchange, presented by Birmingham 2022 Festival. Pocock moved to Ikon from her previous position as Assistant Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICA), prior to which she held curatorial positions at Modern Art Oxford and Art Scene China. She holds an MA (Distinction) in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London.

Canadian-born Marilou Laneuville is Head of Exhibitions and Publications at Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, where she has worked for the past sixteen years. Laneuville recently curated the monographic exhibitions AYA TAKANO – New Myth (2023), Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg – The Skin Is a Thin Container (2023), and Christine Rebet – Escapology (2021), as well as co-curating the group exhibitions Comme un parfum d’aventure (2020-2021), presenting artworks from the collections of macLYON and the Lyon Museum of Fine Art in dialogue with those of guest artists. Since 2019, she has also been co-artistic director of Jeune création internationale, an exhibition devoted to emerging artists and presented as part of the Lyon Biennale.

About the artists

Tereza Bušková (b.1978, Prague) lives and works in Birmingham. Following a BA in Fine Art Bušková completed an MA in Fine Art Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in 2007. Bušková celebrates and reinterprets often ancient rituals and customs through the media of print, performance and video. Bušková’s expansive and socially-engaged practice actively involves diverse, hard to reach communities in traditional craftmaking and baking workshops inspired by Slavonic folklore as well as British, European and global cultural traditions. Previous participatory projects include The Clipping the Church (2016), which sought to revive an ancient and almost forgotten English tradition as part of which families would flock to local churches, holding hands with each other in order to encircle it with open arms. More than 200 people were present at the artist’s orchestrated reenactment of the clipping of St Barnabas Church, Erdington, Birmingham in June 2016, 13 days prior to the Brexit referendum. As a potent symbol of identity and belonging, such a public art project united a disparate community, commemorating the clipping of the church by combining Bohemian wedding celebrations with English rituals.

Delaine Le Bas addresses belonging, equality and fairness, nationhood, land, gender and mysticism of nature and human life across diverse media including painting, sculpture, embroidery, installations, performance and literature. Her work is political and social while strongly humane and personal, as the artist’s practice reflects her life including her lived experience as a member of Romani community. Le Bas has exhibited her works extensively both in the UK and abroad. In June 2007, her work was included in the first Roma Pavilion at 52nd Venice Biennale. Her solo show at Secession Vienna (2023) was selected as the base for the nomination for the Turner Prize 2024. The artist will participate in the exhibition ‘Turner Prize 2024’ at Tate Britain from September 2024 to February 2025. She is the subject of a major exhibition at Tramway Glasgow (2024). The artist has consistently exhibited works in various exhibitions and events, including MUCEM Marseille (2023), Tate Liverpool (2022), the 11th Berlin Biennale (2020), Harbstsalon, Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin (2019, 2017), Roma Pavillion at 58th Venice Biennale (2019), ANTI Athens Biennale, Athens, Transmission Glasgow (2018), 9th Gwangju Biennale (2011), National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (2014), Worthing Museum (2021) and Chapter Cardiff (2010). Her works were included in the first Roma Pavilion at 52nd Venice Biennale (2007). Le Bas worked extensively with her late husband and a fellow artist Damian Le Bas, most notably for the project ‘Safe European Home?’ which toured a number of European countries and the UK (2011-2016). Le Bas’ works are in the collections of the British Council and in MUCEM, Marseille.

Fabien Verschaere is a French artist, born in 1975 in Vincennes. His unique artistic practice, both tragic and comic, is full of hybrid creatures, monsters and chimeras, generated from his unbridled imagination and referencing pop culture, history and daily life. Using watercolours, drawing, painting on canvas, sculpture, installation and film, Verschaere explores the human condition, mingling dreams and nightmares, to project the world as seen through the eyes of a child traumatised by numerous long stays in hospital. Passionate about drawing, he has practiced every day since childhood. Verschaere studied at l’Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris and l’Ecole Régionale des Beaux-Arts de Nantes. He has exhibited widely, including at the Montreal Biennale (2002), Palais de Tokyo (2003), macLYON (2007), La Force de l’Art 02 (2009), SeMA with G-Dragon (2015) and Ilmin Museum of Art (2019).