Top 10 Artworks to See at Friends in Love and War in Birmingham

Ikon Gallery is known for exciting and expertly curated exhibitions. Their newest presentation explores the meaning of friendship in contemporary life using video, sculpture, painting, photography, and textiles. Works from The British Council Collection have been curated collaboratively by friends Marilou Laneuville, Head of Exhibitions and Publications, at macLYON, France, and Melanie Pocock, Artistic Director of Exhibitions, Ikon Gallery. UK.

Defining friendship is difficult, and its meaning and relevance change through time. Are friends just people who offer us benefits? Or are they our best selves offering each other trust and affection? Is friendship unconditional—or can friends become critics and enemies? The artists in this exhibition consider how society, politics, culture, and social media influence friendships. Not just as individual humans, but across species—maybe your dog is your most trusted friend? And not forgetting nation-state diplomatic friendships—how might cultural organizations work together across the globe? Let’s dive into the friendship debate!

1. Pogus Caesar

Black British photographer Pogus Caesar was born in the West Indies and grew up in Birmingham. Also a curator, director, and TV producer, his photography captures the simple and poignant moments in ordinary lives that are (of course) extraordinary. Starting out as a painter, Pogus Ceasar fell in love with what he calls “the organic ecstasy of film.”  This image is from his Schwarz Flaneur series, celebrating the themes of love and friendship within diverse communities.

2. Tereza Buškovà

Born in Prague, now settled in Birmingham, Tereza Buškovà explores ritual and tradition, asking us to imagine and actively construct community. Her work focuses on genuine connection and collaboration within communities, especially with mothers and children. Her Clipping The Church processional performance brought together a neighborhood in Erdington, Birmingham with a re-enactment of a forgotten English tradition, weaving in Central and Eastern European heritage.

3. Luke Routledge

Did you have an imaginary friend in childhood? Luke Routledge allows viewers of all ages to explore friendships of the imagination. Living and working in Birmingham, Luke Routledge creates human-scale, figurative sculptures that inhabit a speculative, fictional world. Discovering the mind-blowing hypothetical notion of “strange matter” involving neutron stars and quarks started him on a world-building quest. Animatronics, animation, and short story narratives help create an absorbing multiverse where anything might happen as his “strangelet” creatures travel through their fictional world.

4. Fabien Verschaere

Spending long and lonely periods in the hospital as a child, Fabien Verschaere developed a passion for creating imaginary worlds. His art brings together drawing, painting, comic books, illuminated manuscripts, dreams, fairy tales, and graffiti. His Seven Days Hotel is a 60-page illuminated tale of a sick child’s encounter with the world, seen through the eyes of a princess. With this artist you get two for one—as you enter the Ikon Gallery the visitor is greeted by a huge swirling black and white Verschaere mural, winding its way through the gallery.

5. Delaine Le Bas

Short-listed for the Turner Prize in 2024, Delaine Le Bas is a truly multidisciplinary artist. Her installations might include embroidery, costume, decoupage, sculpture, painting, film, photography, and household ephemera. Exploring her Romani heritage is a key part of her work, but she is also fascinated by our relationship with land and nature, belonging, and nationhood. This exhibit, called What We Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Us?, has evolved over a number of years to consider love and the people who support us in times of loss.

6. Géraldine Kosiak

Based on an imaginary correspondence, Géraldine Kosiak connects with figures in art history whose courage and resilience have influenced her work. She is interested in objects, memories, and situations that carry an individual and collective memory. Mon cher, ma chère is a series of paintings, embroideries, and typed letters, dedicated to ground-breaking artists Claude Cahun and Meret Oppenheim.

7. Rose Wylie

Rose Wylie paints freely on large, unstretched, and unprimed canvases, adding in a collage of text and repeated motifs over the paint. Bagdad Cafe is part of Rose Wylie’s (Film Notes). Here, she focuses on Percy Adlon’s 1987 film Bagdad Cafe, which tells the story of the budding friendship between two women in a Californian motel, who find a connection despite facing adversity. Rose Wylie paints from memory, using the sensations the images and music of the film aroused in her.

8. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

The smiling woman in this oil on canvas painting looks perfectly self-contained, but might equally be welcoming us in. Interestingly, the figures in Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s paintings are not real people. The artist creates them from found images and her own imagination. The canvas focuses completely on the figure—without objects for historical or social reference, the people in her work are completely open to our own personal interpretation.

9. Niek van de Steeg

The massive, interactive installation Structure de correction, table de débat, takes up a whole room of Ikon Gallery. It consists of a table and benches made by Niek van de Steeg from very basic materials like plastic tubing and cable ties. The chairs wobble, the table squeaks. Across and above the table unfolds a huge paper tablecloth. The public is invited to sit communally at the table, drawing or writing on the paper, exchanging, and sharing ideas about friendship on a “conveyor belt of ideas.”

10. Rachel Maclean

The harmony and conflict of nation-state relationships is the subject of a flamboyantly humorous video by Rachel Maclean. The artist uses costumes, prosthetics, green screen, and digital editing to create her satirical work. The Lion and the Unicorn features the English Lion and the Scottish Unicorn from the Royal Coat of Arms, overlaid with real-life archive audio, poking fun at the nature of the relationship between the two nations, and challenging the media representations that stir up public tension.

Birmingham, the UK’s second city, is a buzzing cultural hub. If you live in the UK, or are planning a trip here, do head to the Ikon Gallery. Bring a friend. Or a frenemy! We loved it, and we hope you enjoyed our top picks. In this sad post-Brexit climate, Franco-British relations have never looked so bold and exciting!

Friends in Love and War — L’Éloge des meilleur·es ennemi·es is presented at Ikon Gallery in collaboration with macLYON, 2 October 2024 – 23 February 2025. ikon-gallery.org