Shakespeare saw friendship as a 'constant in all other things, save in the office and affairs of love,’ sensing adoration as capable of corrupting its very being. The dynamics of what we understand of human relationships can convince us we have hundreds of friends - if we go by our ‘like’ counts and ‘follower’ numbers. Far from filling a room, friendship is ephemeral by nature, appearing and reappearing in our actions and attraction to one another. So an exhibition that suggests capturing 'friendship in love and war’, for its successes and failures, will likely make us friend or foe.

Having seen them speak very fondly about their friendship, dating back to their first collaborative project in Singapore some years before, the opportunity to interview the co-curators of Friends in Love and War, Melanie Pocock of the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, and her counterpart Marilou Laneuville, macLYON, days before the show opened, served as a reminder of the reward of relationships, at a moment of immense unrest. As is archetypal with group shows of this kind, Friends in Love and War is an exhibition born of an idea facilitated by existing works of art. Drawing on a host of artworks from two very different collections, that of the British Council's and macLYON’s collections, Pocock and Laneuville have consciously, as they eloquently explain, reintroduced works from recent history, to have them activated by artists reacting with works of their own. The sensibilities of this twin cities’ exhibition lie in the curators’ choice of artists - Rachel Maclean, Gillian Wearing, Rose Wylie, Luke Routledge, Pogus Caesar and Jimmie Durham, among them. Their various practices and approaches to notions of camaraderie and companionship, take us on a tender and equally tormented journey through time. Excerpts from a conversation with STIR:

This act of collective embrace not only pays homage to ancient customs but also highlights the strength of unity within a multicultural community, fostering a sense of belonging and shared heritage among its members. – Melanie Pocock

Rajesh Punj: Can we begin by talking about your relationship, friendship even, and its significance to the exhibition Friends in Love and War?

Melanie Pocock: Our friendship began when we first worked together in Singapore. With this exhibition, Marilou and I, not just as friends, were empathetic about working cross-culturally, and what that would give, by way of opportunities, to the artists involved. At this time we also discovered that Birmingham and Lyon are twin cities. That said, I was already aware of how Birmingham and Lyon are equivalent major second cities in their respective countries, whilst also being geographically central. I don't know if it's the same in France, but here we describe Birmingham as the heart of England, middle England, and funnily, when something's in the middle, it can be overlooked, described as 'middle of the road’. I think that the British Council were very interested when I proposed working with Marilou on this idea of linking these two equivalent second cities, to create a cultural alliance that doesn't rely on the capital cities, Paris and London. There is so much of this happening now in the art world, of the need to decentralise the arts and to think more horizontally about a place and migration and where influences come from. So, we were interested not just in bringing a lot of existing works together, by selecting from collections here in England and France, but also in introducing artists with connections to the Lyon and Birmingham regions to benefit from this and to give their individual practices attention, those who otherwise wouldn't have this kind of international spotlight. It was about everyone seizing the opportunity and I think this twin partnership between the two cities feels like a geographical connection that is deserving of many more projects together.

Marilou Laneuville: I think friendship can also be political. Before doing this, I wasn’t aware of the British Council collection. I discovered that through Melanie, in fact, thanks to Melanie, because the French Institute and the British Council aren't the same. So, it was also important for us at macLYON to try to take work from our collection. As Melanie said, we also wanted, between us, to support local artists in Lyon and Birmingham alike by inviting them to join the project.

Rajesh: The idea of choosing from a collection intrigued me, the idea of you going with a curatorial premise and then selecting based on a set of ideas, for what fits. How have you gone about that?

Melanie: I think like so many collections, we began by looking at the online catalogue, which offered limited information, but we were still able to try to select. Then we went to the British Council collection, to see the works in person together, which was hugely important. We have included Sonia Boyce’s Pillowcase (1990), an older work that goes to the root of her work. At that moment she was moving away from thinking about herself, to greater ideas about collective identity and collaborating with others. Visually the piece has all these personal ads, kind of old school, that would have originally been published in newspapers by people looking for love or friendship. Boyce transcribed them in paint to create this coloured woven pillowcase. It happened that the piece was undergoing some examination when we were at the British Council collection and, whilst we weren't aware of it, we wanted it immediately for the exhibition. Reading all those ads was somehow quite affecting as these individuals searched for friendship or love and we thought the work was perfect for us. We discovered the work purely by accident. But also, by being physically present within the collection, that kind of immersion where we could spend time with the inventory and artworks, allowed for such possibilities to happen.

Rajesh: I have this notion that works that already exist are specific to a moment and that you have to adapt them to an idea in the present, to suit a new situation. But it seems like there's still a remarkable relevance that you're talking about that carries certain works through time. Significant to your encounter with Sonia’s pillow work; did you sense the same thing with other works in the collection?

Melanie: Yes, I suppose, in the case of that particular work it immediately made me think of how that same human desire has since translated online to social media which didn't exist then. It was a different context, which made sense to have this work in the exhibition. But also, I think what’s been interesting with the selection is that there are a lot of strong Black British women artists, like Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, and then there is Delaine Le Bas, who is being nominated for the Turner Prize [this year]. Those names, some of which are from recent history, were important when originally collected, and for their being exhibited now, have, in a new context, become interesting again. We did try to select works based on what they were conveying and their meaning to the overall exhibition. It is a testament to the strength of the artists’ work and their ideas about friendship and solidarity, acknowledging the difficulties of being and working together and collectively.

Rajesh: Were you able to take your choice of works and move them through time?

Melanie: The kind of personal ads that Sonia Boyce includes in her 1990 work practically don’t exist anymore and so it made sense to want to align that with how we communicate via social media today and how her works present an evolution of friendship and intimacy. I want to mention Rachel Maclean's work, The Lion and the Unicorn (2012), made at the time of the referendum on Scottish independence; thinking about the political context then and now, all of which is triggered by 2016's Brexit decision. Scotland started asking itself again whether it wanted independence because of its wish to stay in the union and to reintroduce a work like that, with the same unease and an unresolved air to Scotland’s own and as well as European position now still.

Tereza Bušková, a local artist from the Czech Republic, who's been living in Birmingham for quite some time now, made a work two weeks before the referendum on Brexit. For a performance she had planned, the artist envisioned bringing together the diverse community of Erdington, including many residents with Eastern European backgrounds, to participate in an Anglo-Saxon ritual known as “clipping the church”. In this tradition, participants form a circle around the church, facing inward, holding hands and symbolically embracing the congregation. This act of collective embrace not only pays homage to ancient customs but also highlights the strength of unity within a multicultural community, fostering a sense of belonging and shared heritage among its members. But then when the referendum happened, her work suddenly took on a greater resonance. The idea that a community of European migrants was at the core of that, and even with the years having passed, we still feel the same difficulty for those communities. I think that this kind of project between Ikon and macLYON is intended to reinforce our cultural alliances, which, honestly speaking, has become more difficult with Brexit. In terms of exhibitions and touring exhibitions, in particular, it's much more difficult than before; so, it's even more important that we continue to work together. I think the British Council and their support gave us this opportunity.

I think it is one of those things that when we began working on the show, for both of us going into this, we were thinking about ‘friendship’ just as a subject and a wider condition and as a curatorial project, within a framework, it really worked.
– Marilou Laneuville

Rajesh: Regarding the exhibition, you mentioned that established and emerging artists were invited to respond to the works of the two collections. How were you successfully able to combine existing works with new commissions?

Marilou: Before talking to local artists in both Lyon and Birmingham, I also asked Melanie to look at our collection at macLYON because I believed we might be able to include some works from Lyon in addition to those from the British Council collection. The focus of our collection is very different from major installations, but we still managed to find pieces that offered a different perspective to the works of the British Council. This led to the selection of Niek van de Steeg’s Structure de correction/table de débat (2000) to the exhibition, which proved so important in bringing people together, to write and draw at and on the table and discuss similar or very different points of view. Also, we have included Fabien Verschaere’s artwork, which appears as a fairy tale talking about loneliness as a sick child. Gordon Matta-Clark has a performance in Berlin. We were looking for greater contexts for the exhibitions and we discussed looking at local artists to go even further with the subject of friendship. So, we selected a few artists, by doing a series of studio visits together, in Lyon and here in Birmingham. We selected works relating to relationships and looked for artists who work specifically on friendship or collectively. I think the notion of working collectively was also important in this exhibition.

Rajesh: Can I ask about the legacy of the exhibition?

Marilou: I said to Melanie, when we began working on the project, we would have truly succeeded if friendships grew from this exhibition. I think it has been the case for many of the artists, mainly coming from a dialogue between artworks in Birmingham and Lyon.

With the politics and the problems that we have happening internationally, how do you understand the weight or the worth of friendship in the situation that we are in now?

Marilou: I think it is one of those things that when we began working on the show, for both of us going into this, we were thinking about ‘friendship’ just as a subject and a wider condition, and as a curatorial project, within a framework, it really worked. We of course, had Brexit as a political context, so we thought, okay, beyond big governance and politics, how can we as curators, as small, mid-sized museums, committed to public exhibitions and also actively hosting discourses, welcome thinking about the positive aspects of friendship, as well as to think about how difficult they are maintained.

Melanie: It was an experience for us both.

'Friends in Love and War — L’Éloge des meilleur·es ennemi·es' is presented at Ikon Gallery in collaboration with macLYON as part of the British Council’s UK/France Spotlight on Culture 2024, from October 02, 2024 – February 23, 2025.