Contemporary Conversations: Banksy | Love is in the Bin

8 October 2021
Join us for an exciting conversation about the world’s most sought-after street artist Banksy and his iconic work 'Love is in the Bin', which was the result of a public art stunt that made history in 2018. Art curator and broadcaster Kate Bryan, Artistic Director of the Barbican Will Gompertz and Head of Evening Sale at Sotheby’s Emma Baker will share their insights on the first occasion when a piece of live performance art was sold at auction, and explain how this piece of art history will be sold again at Sotheby’s on 14 October 2021.

Meet the Panel

Will Gompertz, Artistic Director at the Barbican

Arts Editor of the BBC since 2009 and formerly a director of the Tate Galleries, Will has taken up a new role as Artistic Director at the Barbican Centre in London. He is a world expert on modern art and has written about the arts for The Times and the Guardian for over 20 years. In 2009, he wrote and performed a sell-out one-man comedy show about modern art at the Edinburgh Festival. He was voted one of the world’s top 50 creative thinkers by New York’s Creativity Magazine. He is the author of What Are You Looking At? 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye and Think Like An Artist…And Lead a More Creative, Productive Life.


Kate Bryan, Art Curator, Writer, Advisor and Broadcaster, Head of Collections at Soho House globally

Kate Bryan is an arts broadcaster and Head of Collections for Soho House and Co globally. In June 2019 she published her first book, The Art of Love, and her second, Bright Stars was published in 2021.

She has written and presented television programmes for BBC, Sky Arts and Sky Arte Italia and is a judge on the long running programmes Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year and Landscape Artist of The Year. Her current ongoing series is Inside Arts which presents the latest exhibitions across the U.K for Sky Arts.

In 2014 she won the Arts category in the Women of the Future Awards and is now a mentor for young artists from under represented backgrounds.


Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Sotheby's

Emma Baker, Head of Evening Sale, Contemporary Art

Emma joined Sotheby’s in 2011 as a Researcher/Writer for the Contemporary Art Department in London and was appointed Head of Research in 2014 with a focus on the academic and visual content of the Evening Sale catalogues.

After playing an increasingly lead role in the running of these auctions, Emma was promoted to Head of Sale in October 2018. In 2017 she was responsible for co-curating the selling exhibition at Sotheby’s S2 Gallery, Traumata: Louise Bourgeois/Yayoi Kusama, for which she also led a panel discussion on the topic of women in art history – a subject she feels particularly passionate about.

Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Emma worked in the Curatorial Department at Tate Britain after graduating with an MA in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2010.


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