Conferences and Talks

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‘Let the atrocious images haunt us’: Artistic Representations of and Reactions to the Disfigured Faces of the Great War, Les Gueules cassées: disfigurement and its legacies, University of Exeter, 2015

‘The only English periodical of the avant-garde’: Ray: Art Miscellany, Twentieth Century British Periodicals: Word and Art on the Printed Page 1900-1999, University of Reading, 2017

‘The giving and taking away of faces’: The Great War and the art of facial disfigurement, The First World War: Past, Present, Future, Edinburgh Napier University, 2019

 ‘Arch vs Anti-Modernist: David Bomberg in the collections of the Ben Uri Gallery and the Borough Road Gallery, London South Bank University (The Sarah Rose Collection)’, New Work in Modernist Studies 10, British Association of Modernist Studies, 2020

Hopeful Modernisms, British Association of Modernist Studies, University of Bristol, 2022

Art Publishing, Periodicals & Printed Things, University of Northumbria, 2022

Revisiting the Avant-Garde Total Work of Art, University of Leuven, 2022

Outsiders 2022, University of Brighton, 2022

Cultures of Modernity, Australasian Modernist Studies Network, University of Auckland, 2022

Uses of Modernism, Ghent University, 2023

Heritage for a Common Future/Future(s) for a Common Heritage, Nova University of Lisbon, 2023

Arts and Humanities in Digital Transition, Nova University of Lisbon, 2023

Heritages: Past and Present- Built and Social, AMPS, Czech Technical University, 2023

(Re)imagining Value, University of Newcastle, 2023

Art Without Borders: The Avant-Garde Networks of the Twentieth Century, University of Leeds, 2024

Ephemeral Modernisms, British Association of Modernist Studies, University of Leeds, 2024

Becoming Gustav Metzger: Uncovering the Early Years, 1945-59, The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, 2021

'Czech Routes to Britain: a brief contextual introduction to the contribution of selected Czechoslovak émigré artists to British visual culture', A Tribute to Franta Belsky, Insiders/Outsiders Festival, 2021

In conversation with Tereza Bušková, British Czech and Slovak Association, Czech Embassy, London, 2023

From Émigré to Englishman: Fred Uhlman ‘Painter of Dreams', The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, 2023

'Tristan Tzara: The Gas Heart', Cartea de Vineri/Friday Book Club, DOR-Romanian Diaspora CIC, 2023

Fred Uhlman, OJC, Oxford's Jewish Community, 2024

'Mothers without Hands', a new socially engaged contemporary art project by Tereza Bušková, University of Derby, 2024

DOR Romanian Diaspora  and Dr Nicola Baird meet Howard Reich, 'The Art of Inventing Hope: Intimate Conversations with Elie Wiesel', 2024

Talks and events accompanying The Making of an Englishman: Fred Uhlman, A Retrospective, Burgh House, London, 2018

Talk by independent art historian and curator Monica Bohm-Duchen

Introductory talk by author Rachel Seiffert followed by a screening of the 1989 adaptation of Uhman’s novella Reunion directed by Jerry Schatzberg 

Dr Anthony Grenville- “The Making of an Englishman”: Fred Uhlman’s Journey from Stuttgart to Hampstead-

Dr Anthony Grenville (Chair of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, University of London) contextualises Uhlman’s story by discussing the emigration of Jews from Germany and Austria after 1933 and in particular their settlement in the then Borough of Hampstead before analysing Uhlman’s autobiography, The Making of an Englishman as an account of his journey into British society. 

Talks accompanying Czech Routes to Britain, Ben Uri Gallery, London, 2019:

Dr Tereza Stehliková: Trieste In-between states short film screening and talk-

Cross disciplinary artist and academic, Dr Tereza Stehliková introduces and presents her short film, Trieste: In-between states, 2016, an impressionistic documentary inspired by a conversation with John Berger and intertwined with excerpts from Deborah Levy’s short story, Swallowing Geography. She will also discuss collaborative book project, Railtracks,2011, a sensual and exploratory dialogue between John Berger and Anne Michaels illustrated throughout by photographs taken by Stehlíková which chart an atmospheric journey by train through the winter landscapes of Southern Bohemia. 

Dr Jana Barbora Burešová on Dorrit Dekk-

Exile studies academic, Dr Jana Barbora Burešová presents the work of Czechoslovak graphic designer and illustrator, Dorrit Epstein, also known as Dekk. A great admirer of the photomontagist, John Heartfield, Dekk often used collage in her design and advertising work for clients that included London Transport, British Rail and the Post Office Savings Bank as well as P&O, Penguin Books and Tatler magazine. As a designer for the 1951 Festival of Britain’s Land Travelling Exhibition she created the mural 'British Sports and Games', subsequently displayed in cities across the midlands and the north of England.

Dr Glenn Sujo on Yehuda Bacon -

Artist, art historian and Senior Faculty member of the Royal Drawing School, Dr Glenn Sujo recalls meetings and conversations with the Czech-born, Israeli artist-survivor Yehuda Bacon and uncovers a treasury in the archive. In conversation with Head of the Ben Uri Research Unit (BURU), Sarah MacDougall.

Tereza Busková and Mila Fürstová in conversation with Tereza Porybná -

Multidisciplinary contemporary artists Tereza Busková and Mila Fürstová discuss their fascinating and varied practices in conversation with former Director of the Czech Centre in London, Dr Tereza Porybná using examples on display at Ben Uri as part of current exhibition, Czech Routes.

Dr Peter Cannon-Brookes on Czechoslovak figurative sculpture-

 Art historian and Consultant Curator for The Franta Belsky and Irena Sedlecka Studios, Dr Peter Cannon-Brookes leads an informal discussion on the subject of Czechoslovak figurative sculpture focussing on key examples by Franta Bělský, Irena Sedlecká and Anita Mandl on the display at Ben Uri as part of current exhibition, Czech Routes.

Talks accompanying Becoming Gustav Metzger, Ben Uri Gallery, London, 2021:

Nicola Baird and Leanne Dmyterko (The Gustav Metzger Foundation), co- curators of Becoming Gustav Metzger, introduce the upcoming exhibition and online  events programme, followed by an audience Q&A. 

Carina Plath (Curator of Painting and Sculpture, Sprengel Museum, Hannover,  Germany) discusses the ‘publicness’ of Gustav Metzger’s work, his early proposals   for monuments and the idea of occupying space by artists, which later is resumed in  sculpture projects such as Aequivalenz: Shattered Stones (2007), followed by an  audience Q&A.

Co-curators Nicola Baird and Leanne Dmyterko (The Gustav Metzger Foundation), conduct a virtual walk through the exhibition Becoming Gustav Metzger. 

Andrew Wilson (Senior Curator Modern & Contemporary British Art, and Archives at Tate Britain) and Dr Elizabeth Fisher (Leverhulme Research Fellow,  Northumbria University) talk about the retrieval and re-discovery in 2010 and subsequent exhibition (at Documenta in 2012) as well as the relationship between 

ethics and aesthetics in Gustav Metzger’s early work, followed by an audience Q&A. 

Pontus Kyander (art critic and curator) and Daniela Perez  (independent curator) explore the themes of activism and ecology in Gustav Metzger’s oeuvre, followed by an audience Q&A.  

Dr Bronac Ferran (independent writer and curator) 'on visiting Wittgenstein's grave with Gustav Metzger'. Ferran will address negation and its presence in post-war Jewish art and poetry as manifest in Gustav Metzger’s work, contextualising her  discussion by considering other poets and artists as well as technology and  philosophy in the post-war period, followed by an audience Q&A.

Jo Joelson, of artistic duo London Fieldworks, shares her experience of being Gustav Metzger’s neighbour and insights into his artistic practice. Joelson will also  discuss collaborative projects on which she worked with Metzger including: Null  Object (2012) and the immensely influential, Remember Nature (2015), followed by  an audience Q&A. 

Talks accompanying Knots: Jonny Briggs x Burgh House - Contemporary Interventions into an Historic House, Burgh House, London, 2021-2022:

Jonny Briggs and Darian Leader in conversation-

Following an illustrated introduction by Briggs to his oeuvre to date, psychoanalyst and Trustee of the Freud Museum, Darian Leader will ignite discussion around the work included in the exhibition, which takes its title from psychiatrist and mental health campaigner, R.D. Laing's 1970 book of collected poetry, and refers, in Briggs’s own words, to 'knots in wood... psychological knots and double binds'.