From Markus Schinwald's portraits of contortionists to Iris Klein's eerily human solarised prints of her trademark ghost-like puppets captured in the woods, the legacy of Viennese Actionism and Austrian artists' subsequent concern with the body's presence is palpable in this show of contemporary Austrian photography, on til 25 August.
You can almost taste the dust in Stephen Shore's photographs of rural America. He captures the discrete comeliness of nondescript townscapes with all the exuberance of a native New Yorker discovering his motherland. In 1972, Shore hit the road in a rental car, leaving behind the buzz of New York City to explore the humdrum towns and suburbs of North America en route to Amarillo, Texas. Shore had found what would become his muse for the remainder of the decade - the visually complex mundanity of parking lots, gas stations, discount motels and greasy diners. 
Some reports say that more than 650,000 deaths can be attributed to the ongoing Iraq War. Mark Sladen and the ICA, keen to encourage debate about how this war might be remembered, have gathered 26 artists from Europe. America and the Middle East to produce a memorial to it. 'How,' asks Sladen, 'can one propose a memorial for a conflict which has not ended, when no victor has been declared, and when history has had no chance to filter the chaos of lived experience?' 
The advertising company Wieden + Kennedy London has set up a talent scheme that gives four people from outside of the advertising world the chance to be part of Wieden + Kennedy London for 3 months. To apply all you have to do is create a response, in any digital format, to the question 'can anything be beautiful?'. The deadline is 15 June. 
This Saturday Bonkersfest! and the South London Gallery will present four new visual and live art commissions, as part of a free, annual one-day summer arts and music festival. Inspired by madness, these new installations and performances, including a photographic project by Wu Xiao Kang who committed suicide when he was 26 (below), will take place in and around Camberwell Green during Bonkersfest! 
Daniel Gordon's mis-use of photographic materials as a representational medium serves as a roadblock to the agreed-upon standards of beauty and quality that are a part of traditional photography. The cropped compositions call to mind documentary-style photography but because the sculptures are made solely to be photographed, nothing exists outside the border of Gordon's "decisive moment". 
Lupe Nunez-Fernandez takes a break from playing music shows in tiny venues in California to report on a few great shows she caught along the way.
Photo-london opens this Thursday at Old Billingsgate presenting 56 exhibitors from 10 countries and the work of 400 international photographers and artists. As well as providing an unprecedented panoramic view of contemporary photography and its development since 1970, the fair brings with it a programme of special events and talks at which leading international experts will explore the questions of how to build a collection, and the evolution of contemporary photography and the influence of photojournalism. 
Until 3 June Barcelona is hosting an ambitious and massive video art extravanganza. Across the city in 106 venues ranging from museums to shops, the LOOP festival of video art is filling the entire city with video art works by more than 800 artists. Opening on Thursday is the only art fair devoted exclusively to video art. The LOOP Fair will go on for three days during which time it will bring together artists, gallery owners, collectors, critics, museum directors and lovers of video art. 
The German artist Jorg Immendorff died on Monday 28 May at the age of 61 after suffering for 8 years from the progressive neurodegenerative disease ALS. Immendorff studied under Joseph Beuys at the Duesseldorf Art Academy in the 1960s, and in 1978 began his best-known works, the "Cafe Deutschland" series of paintings in which he addressed Germany's post-war split. 
Christoph Buchel's show opens without his consent, Sotheby's opens Moscow office, London gallery owner donating profits form contemporary art to Scientology, and Lou Reed brings his curatorial skills to a photography show in New York. 
Roxanne Brousseau-Félio selects 10 Your Gallery artists for her second Your Gallery Video of the Week. This week's artists come from The Netherlands, Serbia, UK, Japan, Slovenija, US and Spain. Brousseau-Félio has also created a personal webpage highlighting the works selected with more personal details on SpreadArt.net. View this week's video here . 
Anything less imposing than German artist Thomas Schutte's giant sculptural manifestations would be dwarfed by the recently unwrapped 650ft Frith Street space on Golden Square. For in gallery terms this is something of an architectural coup, given the possibilities afforded by its impressive dimensions and central Soho location. In terms of making a statement one might easily presume 'the bolder the better' to be the resident mantra at camp Schutte - rarely has the female form felt more brutally described. 
Among the most exciting shows currently on in Beijing are Hugo Tillman's mapping of the psyche of the Chinese contemporary art world in "Film Stills of the Mind", YOON Jeong-mee's portraits of Korean children surrounded by their toys (below), Liu Wei's 150 sq metre installation "The Outcast" that captures both the political and physical atmosphere of Beijing, and Song Dong's retrospective which articulates the connections between contemporary and classical Chinese art. 
Steven Shearer's ongoing picture album of male youths stops by Ikon in Birmingham, a city where his images' reference to heavy metal culture becomes entangled with some of the sources that inspired them.
The South African-born, Berlin-based artist Robin Rhode is set to have his first exhibition at a European museum when he shows at the Haus der Kunst in Munich this autumn, but before that his works are being shown in Rubenstein's three Chelsea spaces this month. This might have been an opportunity for the artist to be richly and lengthily articulate, but he has ended up sounding like he got to the podium, took a deep breath, and found his notes in a jumble.
Congratulations to Simon Tolhurst, the winner of the sixth round of SHOWDOWN, a particularly close contest. His artwork will compete with other SHOWDOWN finalists to find an overall winner after the 12 rounds of SHOWDOWN have been completed. Voting is now open for the current round of SHOWDOWN and artists can also now load up their work for the next round. 
Giorgione's painting 'The Tempset' is the inspiration for one of the many satellite exhibitions in Venice during this year's biennale. Mat Collishaw and Paul Fryer have been brought together by curator James Putnam to create an installation that "explores ideas of duality, positive and negative forces and notions of balance and imbalance" which Giorgione's multi-layered work throws into question. 
Trisha Donnelly famously rode in on a horse to the opening of her first solo show at Casey Kaplan in 2002. She announced that she was an envoy sending word of the capitulation of Napoleon, and then she left, saying "and with this I am electric, I am electric." Not surprisingly, the opening for Donnelly's current show was busy and expectant. Nothing, sadly, occurred, but it sent the audience back to her art, which was - as has become her habit - just as mysterious as that first appearance. 
Has the once daring Anne Leibovitz become disorientated by the heavy pressures of officialness that dominate the enterprise of pre-selling the real Queen to the American public? asks Martin Kemp, Professor of the History of Art at Oxford University.
Another delightfully strange show from the never-pretentious gallerist Wolfe Lenciewicz. T1+2 saw a thrumming crowd at last Friday's opening private view for 'In Space We Trust'. Alex Hamilton's pieces, landing somewhere between photography and drawing, contain a highly wrought set of interactions: between drawing and technologies of mass-reproduction, between map-making and insinuation, openness and abstraction. 
A new exhibition of photographs by Yanai Toister opening today at Sandroni Rey gallery in Los Angeles explores cracks in the very idea of environmental seamlessness - focusing on the landscape illusions found in contemporary housing developments in Israel.
With the theme "visualize our values" Danfoss A/S, a Danish industrial company, is launching an international art award for students within visual arts, design or architecture. The total award sum is 100.000 EUR, and the artwork will be evaluated by jury members of international renown. 
Hawaiian-born artist Kent Rogowski gives poignancy and personality to mundane toys and whimsical objects. Toys and games are commonly intended to provide creative escape, but the objects Rogowski playfully appropriates evoke nothing more imaginative or stimulating than visions of last-minute purchases and forgotten minor amusements. 
Jim Shaw has been lumped in with a host of 'movements' over the years, but has always managed to wrestle himself out of the clutches of any particular labeling. His deliberately eclectic approach has demanded such a resistance and is also the natural corollary of the disparate obsessions with countercultural Americana and kitsch that are the artist's sustenance. At BFAS Geneva, an art consultancy established by ex-Sotheby's France boss Marc Blondeau, Shaw's 'Distorted Faces' series will be on view alongside parallel ongoing projects from today. 
Before turning his talents to making his own art, Sam Jinks worked as a commercial sculptor for film and television creating all manner of creatures. These skills led to several years collaborating with internationally renowned Australian artist Patrica Piccinini on the figures that appear in her artwork. Now Jinks has his own solo show featuring ultra realistic sculptures including 'The Hanging Man' (below). 
This group show features the work of Maria Castello, Ted Partin and Damian Ucieda, three young photographers whose respective artistic preoccupations present a contemporary wish for what the truth of the medium could be: more with the art of lying than with the truth.
For his first solo exhibition in New York, 'The Departure of the Fish: Redux', Alexander Lee takes his inspiration from a Tahitian creation myth. The legend tells of a volcanic island that transformed into a fish and swam from the mythological place of Havai'I to the north, where it turned once again into land and formed the Tahitian islands. Lee, who he was born in Tahiti, engages in a symbolic retelling of these events through the construction of an ambitious sculptural installation. The show closes 26 May. 
Phillips de Pury and Company is certainly holding its own against the towering twosome of Sotheby's and Christies. For its Contemporary Art Part I sale, the Phillips crowd was young, affluent and international, which made for a noisy party atmosphere during the last big sale of auction week. Highlights included a spectacular black and lime Butterfly painting, which carried an estimate of $40-60,000. De Pury opened the bidding at just $20,000 but a bidder in the room, apparently bored and wanting to save time even though the auction had just begun, jumped in with a bid of $150,000 to follow. "Nice increment," de Pury cracked with a French twist. The final hammer price for this magnificent work was an even $300,000. 
Fewer subjects today remain as taboo and disturbing as cannibalism, and Jim Shaw's 'The Donner Party' exhibition, premiering today at PS1 in New York, gutsily takes on the topic as a code-rich, tongue in cheek allegory of American culture's inherently darker foundation.
Two new limited editions have come to our attention - a Mike Kelley furry toy with a repertoire of 20 phrases such as "Hurt Me, I Don't Mind!" and "Do You Really Love Me?". 'Little Friend' is just $200. And Anish Kapoor has turned his pioneering engineering skills to designing a solar-pannelled backpack - yours for $695. 
Tomorrow night the LA-based musician, visual artist, and performer Marnie Weber will be presenting early film work as well as her new 16mm film, 'A Western Song', featuring a live score performed by the artist's band, The Spirit Girls. The band will conclude the evening's entertainment with a live set of their moody, surreal music. 
After serving 13 years in the army Michael Lisle-Taylor decided to go to art school. He did his BA at Cheslea then went on to focus on sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London, graduating in 2006. His first solo show just opened in London, showcasing a body of work which encompasses sculpture, photography, video, and drawing. 
Grayson Perry debuts in Japan (below), photographs by Ryan McGinley deemed sexually explicit are removed from exhibition of gay art, the Tate appoints French curator for its next Triennial, Malian photographer Malick Sidibe wins Venice Biennale's Golden Lion, Steve McQueen to make first feaure film about the IRA's hunger striker Bobby Sands, Pete Doherty's blood paintings go on sale, and the art market shows no sign of slowing down with this week's contemporary sales in New York exceeding all expectations. 
The contemporary "Day" sales in New York may not have had the armored checkbook cachet of the Evening auction, but they certainly drew a boisterous crowd of equally enthusiastic bidders who witnessed the mysterious withdrawal of works by Julie Mehretu and Charles LeDray as well as a special announcement that Elizabeth Peyton (speaking through lawyers) had something to say regarding a group of preparatory drawings for her book "Craig." According to the painter, the drawings were not intended to be sold and she "may disclaim authorship, a right which she expressly reserves." Meanwhile, at Christie's Keith Haring was on his way to becoming a timeless pop superstar with one of his vinyl banners (below) fetching $2.5 million. 
Approaching Lara Baladi's new photographic installation at Brancolini Grimaldi, Rome, might feel a little like having a near death experience - the countless flashing characters and collaged situations that fill the invisible grid of her dark background panels look like they could be someone's lifetime's memories set on a figurative theatre stage.
The Polish artist, who represented Poland at the last Venice Biennale, focuses on the theme of work for a new series of videos, trying to give the typical art observer a different perspective on the lives of workers - it is "worthwhile to be interested in this grey cold material, that fills the societal cosmos and snidely is labeled as "mainstream", says Zmijewski. 
After the huge success of 'Cruel & Tender' at Tate Modern in 2003, the gallery's first major photography exhibition, Tate is continuing its commitment to photography with a survey show examining British identity through photographs from 1840 to the present day. In conjunction with the exhibition there's also a chance to show your own photographs at Tate Britain and in the Observer newspaper - read on to find out more. 
The artistic director of Puerto Rican art fair CIRCA 2007 reports on the highlights of the Caribbean art fair, including young rising star Melvin Martínez's wedding cake sculpture playing salsa, and Cuban artist ANTUAN with installation "Left or Right" which invited people to punch Bush, Castro, or Chavez in the face (below). 
The German über-photographer Andreas Gursky was the perfect pre-9/11 artist. He excelled at portraying the border-to-border, edgeless hum and busy obliviousness of modern life, what Francis Fukuyama ridiculously declared "the end of history," George W.S. Trow called "The Context of No Context," and Rem Koolhaas dubbed "Junkspace." Unfortunately, as smart and deft as this artist still is, that fizz has gone flat, the power has run low, the former buzz has become a drone. 
We launch today artist Roxanne Brousseau-Felio's video series devoted to presenting the work of Your Gallery artists. Each week we will feature a video created by Brousseau-Felio featuring her choice of 10 artists registered on Your Gallery. View this week's video here . 
A new exhibition at KS Art in New York presents a large group of drawings by Pearl Blauvelt (1893-1987), a self-taught artist whose fascination with the domesticated objects of desire found in mail order catalogues in a way stands as a critique and subversion of the consumerist society of her day and of our times.
Looks like the Tate has decided to turn itself in to a mini Glastonbury of art this weekend - the Tate and "top tier" Swiss bank UBS are holding hands for their special (and largely free) 'Long Weekend' and the conjoined forces are promising an extraordinary and well considered programme of events for all ages and predispositions. Don't miss Mathieu Briand's big French sound installation and a performance by the incomparable Genesis P-Orridge and his band Throbbing Gristle (below). 
An exhibition of over 350 drawings and watercolours reveals the conceptual basis of Vanessa Beecroft's performance works. 
History was made at Christie's this week with its Contemporary sale in New York bringing in record prices for Eva Hesse, Damien Hirst, Agnes Martin, Richard Artschwager, Susan Rothenberg, Gerhard Richter, Barnett Newman and, most notably, Andy Warhol, whose 1963 'Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)' fetched a sensational $71 million. 
Alice Neel was a prolific painter, whose subjects ran the gamut from small children and mother-and-baby portraits, through to the hospitalised and elderly, via intimate portraits of artists, curators, critics and art historians at the height of their creative and intellectual powers. This exhibition, which opens on 23 May, will showcase her painterly account of New York's artistic life in the postwar period. We also preview below in our red VIDEO box a new documentary film about the artist made by her grandson Andrew Neel which is premiering in London tonight. Read more and play video 
Congratulations to the two finalists of the sixth round of SHOWDOWN, Andrew Hagar (top image) and Simon Tolhurst (bottom image). They will now go head-to-head until 9am next Monday, 28 May, during which time you can vote on their two artworks. Click here to vote on these two finalists. Artists also are now able to load up their work for the next round of showdown.
The evening sale of Contemporary Art at Sotheby's this week was an historic event even before it happened. A top-notch Francis Bacon pope is a rarity to the open market, and many art world types were eager to see what a Rothko with a David Rockefeller provenance would bring. Everyone was welcome at the sale as long as you were white, preferably balding and were in possession of a ticket. 
This is Ontani's first New York gallery show in ten years, a chance for a new generation to revisit his ongoing self-portraiture project, which anticipates the work of many, more familiar contemporary names concerned with the construction and meaning of fictional identity - Cindy Sherman and Yasumasa Morimura, for starters.
Hundreds of guests packed into the Hayward Gallery to experience the first major London showing of Antony Gormley's work this week, including Grayson Perry, Jon Snow, Juliet Stevenson and James Putnam. The next night Grayson Perry turned out again, this time in support of the ICA which launched its 60th anniversary with a fundraising pecha kucha night. 
Martin Maloney, best known for his highly coloured, expressive paintings of urban life, will be giving the Peter Fuller Memorial Lecture at Tate Britain on 24 May. He will talk about his work which has been shown in landmark exhibitions such as 'Sensation' at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1997. 
A new section of the Saatchi Gallery's website dedicated to art fairs went live yesterday. Art fair organisers can upload as much information as they like about their art fair, including lists of exhibitors, profiles and contact details for galleries participating, and any other information about the fair, its history, future plans and contacts for the fair. Galleries participating can also have their own profile page within the relevant art fair profile, where they can show their artists work. 
Six large-scale, handmade artist's books centerpiece Michael Light's ongoing aerial photographic investigation into the complex landscapes of America. Shot with a large-format camera from small, self-piloted aircraft and rented helicopters, 'Bookworks', his exhibition opening tomorrow, highlights Light's vision of vast, stunning beauty coupled with the bleakest realities of human manipulation of the environment. 
It can be fast, it can be slow. 'I just enjoy drawing. I don't do it with any sense of it being art. I'm very pleased that people want to see the drawings. But I don't push that'. That's humble Merce Cunningham, probably the most influential living choreographer, on another side to his practice, a highly personal drawing project which has been a part of his daily life for over twenty years.
Coinciding with a major show of Hannah Collins' photographic and film work, debuting at the Fundacion La Caixa in Madrid and Barcelona before touring Europe, 'Finding, Transmitting, Receiving' presents photographs, found family portraits and childhood drawings by Collins from the last 15 years. Together with complete transcriptions of the artist's film scripts, her diverse body of work explores themes of homelessness, migration and other effects of globalization on the lives of individuals. 
Starting this weekend, Arts Unwrapped offers a fantastic opportunity for the general public to see inside the studios of over 1000 artists and designers and 40 studio groups across London. Arts Unwrapped, which takes place over three weekends, is the biggest UK open studios event, enabling people to visit a range of artists from established to emerging talent of the future, learn more about contemporary art, discover artists' working practice, and start or add to your collection. 
Spanish-American artist Maggie Cardelùs is best known for her installations and wall reliefs composed of
material drawn from her personal archive of photos. In 'Looking for time', the title of her recent exhibition at Francesca Kaufmann gallery in Milan, the artist expands her technical repertoire, presenting one collage and three new videos. The work moves into more conceptual territory, privileging mind over matter and getting rid of what lies between the artist and the act of creation. 
According to Gandhi, 'those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares.' The nightmarish scenes set in saccharine-colored styrofoam and polyurethane plastic in Dutch artist Folkert de Jong's life-sized figurative sculpture installations illustrate the truth in Gandhi's statement. Inspired by the German Expressionist painters, De Jong arranges a hodgepodge of characters from serial killers, monsters and significant historical personages in horrifically decaying sets with the aim of skewering social stereotypes and revealing the ridiculousness of people in positions of power. 
The Art Institute in Chicago recently launched a series of exhibition devoted to emerging artists. 'On the Scene', the second in a series, focuses on recent work by three rising talents: Kota Ezawa, Sarah Hobbs (below), and Angela Strassheim.
Like a perfect illustration of Goya's famous quote, 'the dream of reason brings forth monsters', the folk-surrealist characters in Jurczak's drawings - creeping woods, birds, hair, shadows, sharp nose profiles and spindly hands among others - are eerie beyond all else for their seemingly unstoppable propagation through the artist's relatively young oeuvre.
Hiscox Arts Projects are thinking inside the box for their new group show 'Contained', which has been organised by the artist and curator Jemima Burrill. The overarching theme is a preoccupation with architectural confines and six international artists are showing very different works to express what buildings (or a lack of them) mean to us. 
On 2 June Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's first solo show in London opens at Gasworks. Working from imagination and from life, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye's paintings allude to traditions of European portraiture, but her work is less about formality or specific individuals and more about capturing a certain mood through the subjects' attitude, glance or stare. 
Anyone who has stood wrenching off their shoes at the threshold of an installation by the American conceptualist Roni Horn might presume that she would not be the best candidate to produce a work of public art. And yet here it is, 'The Library of Water', or 'Vatnasafn', as it is known in its remote Icelandic location, at the threshold of which you will be pulling at your shoes. Walking over her mat of words is a wistful joy, and her cluster of columns glint attractively, bending the world around them into flexing arcs, but one struggles to find any complexity. 
David Austen's film Crackers is premiering in London tonight at the Prince Charles (off Leicester Square). Commissioned by Milton Keynes Gallery and the Centre for Contemporary Visual Arts, University of Brighton, the 38-minute film, written and directed by British artist David Austen, is set within the confines of a single space, the Drawing Room of The Regency Town House in Hove, once home to a sea captain. 
Not one, not two, but no less than six new exhibitions open the summer season at Baltic with something like a bang - today. From the antics of a made-up museum of natural history to a series of photographs on the theme of Russian cultural identity, one thing all shows have in common is they way in which they dialogue among themselves, the possibility of play and variety within one single gallery building.
On 17 May the Hayward Gallery opens what it is hailing as one of the most exciting and ambitious exhibitions it has presented in recent years - the first major showing in London of the work of Antony Gormley. To coincide with the exhibition a one-hour television documentary directed by Beeban Kidron, 'Antony Gormley: Making Space', will be broadcast by Channel 4 at 8pm on Saturday 12 May. 
The sculptures, paintings, and drawings in Randy Wray's exhibition 'Chapter and Verse' take a variety of approaches to the subject of faith. Diverse styles, materials, and perspectives converge to form a kind of psychic cubism. The distinctive works produced by his sophisticated sense of play are themselves affirmations of faith, even as they raise questions about spirituality, patriotism, and belief in things unseen
The bread and butter of Jonathan Gitelson's art is that most elusive of subjects, everyday life. Since moving from New York to Chicago, Gitelson has turned the overlooked stuff of the city into the focus of his large-scale photographic works, capturing such things as discarded club fliers and pairs of shoes hanging from telephone wires. 
Ingvar Hogni is in his final year at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and graduates this May. For his degree show, currently on view in Reykjavik, he made a photo book consisting of texts and photographs inspired by a period of living in Holland in 2006, and by photographers such as Stephen Shore and Alec Soth. His next project will be about hallways, stairways and entrances - 'I want to get a glimpse of people's lives and the image they present of themselves.' 
The Turner Prize shortlist is announced, Lee Bontecou is honoured by the Amaerican Academy, US patrons flock to the Tate in London, Kara Walker makes TIME magazine'stop 100 list and Anselm Kiefer offers his Barjac studios to the Guggenheim. 
The Pecha Kucha phenomenon started in Tokyo in 2003 when Super Delxue's owners Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (of Klein Dytham Architecture) wanted to turn theie venue into a platform for young creatives to present their work in public. Around 12 presenters are allowed to show 20 slides for 20 seconds each - a concise framework of 6 minutes 40 seconds that prevents the more talkative from getting carried away with themselves. There are PK nights in Tokyo every month and the ICA in London is also presenting PK nights - the next one on 17 May will be a special Pecha Kucha fundraiser with well-known personalities such as Joanna Lumley, Grayson Perry, Simon Schama and Jon Snow taking part. 
'No pictures of the pictures at Gagosian gallery were allowed during painter Glenn Brown's opening last week. Perhaps Larry G. has concerns about some talented rogue copying his artist's lush appropriations? Whatever the reason, the party atmosphere and excitement at seeing new oils and sculptures by Brown was somewhat dampened by the constant "No pictures!" refrain from the rented security guards. When we got past the line of Rolls Royces and Town Cars and were inside the gallery, a worldly friend commented that the atmosphere was more relaxed at The Vatican during holy week.' 
A sense of melancholy reflection pervades Erik Niedling's new photographic series, in which, following previous projects tracing the structures of nostalgia for 'what remains', we are asked whether what we see is an abandoned or a found world.
Time Out and the Whitechapel joined forces last Thursday, one of the busiest nights so far in the arts calendar, for the launch of 'First Thursdays' - a series of late night art and events in East London on the back of which over 70 contemporary art galleries and museums have been persuaded to stay open until 9pm on the first Thursday of every month. (Next dates: Thursday 7 June, Thursday 5 July, Thursday 2 August and ongoing). 
American artist Paul Chan has achieved international acclaim for his drawings, videos and installations that blend a novel drawing aesthetic with philosophical reflections on politics, religion, sex and life today. Today the Serpentine Gallery in London unveils Chan's series 'The 7 Lights' (2005-07), seen for the first time in its entirety. 
If you want to feel the love, have a free meal, and possibly chat up Matt Dillon, David Byrne, Cindy Sherman, or Rufus Wainwright--all of whom have dined here--go to David Zwirner's West 19th Street gallery, where you can partake or just gawk at others in a life-size wooden re-creation of Tiravanija's original 303 Gallery potlatch-piece, a sculpture-performance-guerrilla action wherein he emptied out the office of the 303 Gallery and installed a makeshift kitchen, complete with fridge, hot plates, rice steamers, tables, and stools. He then cooked Thai curry; anyone could drop in, serve him- or herself, and eat. For free. 
Congratulations to the winner of the fifth round of SHOWDOWN, Frank Malafronte. His artwork entitled 'A last glimmer' will compete with other SHOWDOWN finalists to find an overall winner after the 12 rounds of SHOWDOWN have been completed. Voting is now open for the current round of SHOWDOWN and artists can also now load up their work for the next round.
John McSwain is graduating this year from the MFA Fine Art programme from the Parsons The New School for Designs in New York. His film, entitled 'No', was made in 2007 and is part of an installation called 'Incidents of the War/ I Can't Get the Smell of Pizza Out of My Beard.' McSwain's work deals with arrested development and latent adolescence within the punk rock sub-culture post 9-11. Read more and play film (which has no sound). 
Hannah Bureau is studying for an MA in Painting at the Massachusetts College of Art, having completed a BA at Rhode Island School of Design. Her abstract paintings are inspired by natural forms - starbursts, the milky way, the Aurora Borealis, geology, iceberg formations, crystal formations, and crystal gardens - as well as patterns from 1950s and 60s textile design, fractal geometry in nature and computer-generated fractal images. 
From this exhibition of art made in Los Angeles during the past decade emerges a group of artists who share a dedication to craft and mix a wide array of media to create fantasized, often ambiguous, worlds. Among the 15 artists in the exhibition are Mark Bradford, Lari Pittman and Anna Sew Hoy who will be discussing the current LA art scene with Hammer curator Gary Garrels, and talking about how living in the city affects their work, this Sunday, 13 May at 4pm. 
Does what goes up always descend at the very same time? This paradoxical, gravity-related double entendre is very present in Gowin's latest exhibition, two chapters off a new series entitled 'Of falling and floating' opening this week. The collection shows bodies suspended midair over leafy tree tops, mysteriously caught in an act that inspired a very primal anxiety and uncertainty.
In 1989, the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography, the German photographer Joachim Schmid declared: 'No new photographs until the old ones have been used up.' Since then he has rarely shown his own work, choosing instead to exhibit photographs by others which he has found on his urban travels. 
The Gallery at Sketch opens its doors to Claire Hooper's 'The Blessing' today - a solo exhibition featuring a brand new twelve-channel, site specific video-installation. Spanning writing, drawing, sculpture and moving image, Hooper's artistic practice takes a good look at our relationship with architectural space and the 'built environment'. 
assume vivid astro focus's current show uses the architecture of the gallery to create a dialogue between three distinct environments - an installation of 3-D wallpaper, a dark subterranean corridor of music and flashing neon sculptures, and a cordoned multi-disciplinary room that will feature an ongoing series of music-related performances. 
Luis Gispert's film 'Bum Rush' sums up America's obsession with war as entertainment. Or, as Gispert puts it, 'its compulsion to glamorize, sexualize, and trivialize the most regrettable acts. I imagined what soldiers might be fantasizing about as they fire their weapons, and explode ordinance in the middle east. Trying to synchronize a stripers ass to a battlefield.' To watch a clip from 'Bum Rush' click here . 
After feminism, Peyton Place, Tom Learer, David Lynch, Gregory Crewdson and the directors of 'Desperate Housewives' unearthed the sinister activity, hypocrisy and seedy sexual subtext hidden behind clichés of saccharine, sanitized suburbia, it is hard to look at a beaming housewife and her spotless kitchen without expecting the worst. Bangkok-born, Philadelphia-based Laura C Wagner's sarcastic series of screen prints, 'The Cannibal Debutante', drives another spike into the myth of suburbian perfection. 
Shows not to miss this month by Eva Rothschild, Seonna Hong, assume vidid astro focus, a group show exploring the legacy of Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger, and by Mr, a former protégé of Anime art star Takashi Murakami. 
Rickards continues to explore the malleable, wobbly truth and blindly trusted elements of sound-phenomena in her first solo show in London, which just opened this week.
TJ Wilcox's fourth show at Sadie Coles opened on Wednesday with a continuation of 'the artist's investigation of the genres of narrative film'. In 'The Jerry Hall Story' Wilcox tracks the rags to riches story of the leggy blonde who started her career after winning 800 dollars in compensation after a car accident. Wilcox collages film he shot in Texas (Jerry's home state), with archival footage of the model in the promotional video for Bryan Ferry's 1976 hit "Let's Stick Together". 
French artist Mathieu Briand, best known for his large installations featuring electronic music and audience participation, is looking for 100 people to participate in his project 'Did You Ever Want To Be Someone Else?' which will take place in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern on Saturday May 26. 
Portraiture inherently glamourises the subject of its contemplation; when the subject is gang members, it might be difficult to break through the media stereotype, the seamlessly self-assured demeanour and tough stares looking back at the camera - at once proud and fierce, dangerously treading on the darker side of glorification. But looking at Isabel Munoz's series of photographs currently on view at Madrid's Casa America, show the other side of portraiture: the ability to humanise.
In this exhibition Aaron Johnson continues his exploration of contemporary American culture, while introducing a heightened critique of its underlying composition and superficial values. The characters in Johnson's new paintings are composed of emblems of Americana culture, melding references to cowboys, circus freaks, and warmongers. He at once indulges and ridicules their origin, depicting an unforgiving reflection on our over-saturated and animalistic culture. 
Known for his meticulous collages, David Thorpe has created his most ambitious installation to date for this exhibition - a beautifully crafted and imagined architecture entitled 'The Defeated Life Restored' (top). Also on view are three new film and video works by Matthew Buckingham which investigate three pioneering historical figures whose lives have had a lasting legacy and offer useful parallels for present day issues such as the impact of globalisation and colonialism (bottom). 
Earlier this year, Judy Chicago's monumental work 'The Dinner Party' (1974-1979) was permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum as crowning glory of the Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art. This upcoming symposium will no doubt further confirm its legendary status. Edward Lucie-Smith, Gail Levin, Lucy Lippard, Elizabeth Sackler and Chicago herself (below) are among the starry line-up. 
Over Easter weekend in Berlin, Jonathan Meese presented a triology of state productions. A sign at the entrance to the performance of 'De Frau', the last in the trilogy, asked viewers to 'please take in food, drink and video cameras'. The production itself was a kind of over the top spectacle replete with not so subtle Wagnerian references and a Rammstein score, which turned itself inside out to delight and annoy the audience, by turns. Our Berlin correspondent Alix Rule was there with camera in hand to document the event for Your Gallery magazine. Read more and play video. 
Olafur Eliasson wins the first Joan Miro Prize, Elton John has plans to build a gallery, Goldsmith's students exhibit on Second Life, New Orleans gets a new contemporary art biennial, Seattle opens its expanded art museum, Maria Garcia Torres wins Cartier 2007 Prize, and Becks launched a new art and music series with the ICA. 
'The canvases themselves emit a dim uneven glow that wraps you. The most prominent element in the work is a lanky naked boy who trudges through landscapes either thick or barren, wearing what appears to be a gas mask. In the series 'Serbonian Bog,' the masked boy wades at night through a knee-deep swamp full of water lilies and murky water. The canvases are large enough (on the average around 2.5 by 4 meters) to embrace the viewer...' Stacey Duff is entranced by the first solo show of young Chinese artist, Jia Aili. 
'What would happen if that actually happened?' seems to be one of the principal, whimsically rhetorical questions feeding previous works of Viennese artist group mahony, extensively recognised in their own country for their projects' playful response to the site in which they take place, about to have their first plan of action in the UK at London's Austrian Cultural Forum.
The shortlist for the Turner Prize 2007 was announced yesterday. The four artists, who have been nominated for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding 8 May 2007, are Zarina Bhimji, Nathan Coley, Mike Nelson and Mark Wallinger (below), whose work shares an engagement with political, religious and spiritual issues. 
Simon Popper is the man who printed 1000 copies of James Joyce's 'Ulysses' for last year's Beck's Futures prize but with all the words in alphabetical order. He's also documented every singel foreign embassy in London. This obsession with detail is also evident in his latest show, in part an homage to Duchamp, with flashing disco lights emanating from a series of covered grand pianos, and a cartoon plastic ear listening intently at the mouth of a polished silver toy trumpet. 
"For Josef Albers, as with Katharina Grosse, color is an itch theory could never fully scratch. All the so-called laws of color are subject to interpretation as borne out in each and every individual painting. As 'Homage to the Square', Albers' monumental series of color studies begun in 1950 and continued through to his death in 1976, serves to prove, color is an empirically driven area of endless experimentation. A mere two blocks from the site of the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, 'Atoms Inside Balloons', Grosse's Renaissance Society exhibition, is also a response to the gallery's 30 foot high, neo-gothic ceiling. As with all of Grosse's work, 'Atoms Inside Balloons' is in line with Greenberg's assessment that "Modernist art belongs to the same specific cultural tendency as modern science." And within a history of modernist painting characterized as an evolution towards its own self truth, Grosse is indeed a free radical. 
Josef Strau in Vilma Gold's new spaces offers 'a rather messy mix of photos, wall texts (some confessional, some critical, some in German, but all in an impossible font size designed to annoy the most loyal viewer)', while at MOT an exhibition entitled 'YouTubism' tackles the theme of self-promotion, and at Transition a group show 'pulls flora, fauna and all things folksy through a dark, morally ambiguous hedge - backwards'. 
The smell of fresh paint has invaded the Norwich Art Gallery, which is currently hosting an installation of Nedko Solakov's 'A life (black & white)' as a farewell to its 27-year-old public exhibition programme.
Martin Creed's new show at Hauser & Wirth is the last of three large-scale shows at the gallery's Coppermill space and, with his absurdly reductive approach, could hardly be in more marked contrast to Christoph Buchel's attempt at cramming the cavernous ex-factory with a vast accumulation of unreformed stuff. 
Among the exhibitions not to be missed in Berlin this month are shows by Roman Signer (below), Thomas Hirschhorn, Darren Almond, Bjoern Dahlem, Marjetica Potrc, Elena Bajo and Joe Bradley. 
Congratulations to the two finalists of the fifth round of SHOWDOWN, Frank Malafronte (top image) and Mark Rowden (bottom image). They will now go head-to-head until 9am next Monday, 14 May, during which time you can vote on their two artworks. Artists also are now able to load up their work for the next round of showdown. 
The eyes of the characters in Tim Stoner's paintings stare off into the middle distance. Or they're missing altogether. There is something chilling, something reminiscent of the walking dead that stays with you after viewing them. Ex-Becks Futures winner Stoner is well known for his valiant painterly dealings with post-modern alienation, the body cult, the questionable 'joy' of group activities, and his show that launched Alison Jacques's new gallery in Berners Street doesn't disappoint. 
Kalle Nieminen is a fine art student at Lahti University Of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, Finland. Nieminen's work wrestles with existential issues - as he puts it, 'with psychic, physical, material and structural addiction and depency relations of human existence'. For Nieminen, his paintings are an 'intellectual, bodily and expressive way to get closer these problems'. 
Treister's project, stopping by Walsall through July, charts an imaginary time traveler's scientific investigations 'towards the development of new mind control technologies for the British Military'.
Artists Ernesto Caivano (top) and Zak Smith (bottom) first met in the late 1990s at the Cooper Union in New York when they were undergraduates. Since then both of them have concentrated their work around drawing, both embarking on ambitious projects - for Caivano an ongoing series of drawings which he describes as 'a fairytale for adults', and for Smith a drawing for every page of Thomas Pynchon's novel 'Gravity's Rainbow'. They met up again for Your Gallery magazine to discuss their work and the last decade (almost) since they first met as undergrads starting out. 
In his first show since moving to the Gagosian Gallery, Takashi Murakami returns to his roots in traditional Japanese paintings with a series of new works depicting Daruma, the founder of Zen Buddhism. Has Murakami come over all spiritual, asks Jake Wakefield, or is Daruma just another image to be appropriated and enlisted alongside the cast that Murakami has already created and and spread around the world? 
Opening today is 'Embellish at the trafalgar', an exhibition of new work by TAG artists Simon Allen, Victoria Hall, Sarah Lee, Simon Phillips, and The Little Artists, who are showing their series of dolls based on Grayson's Perry's alter ego, Claire (below). Working in a range of different mediums, the artist share an interest in issues to do with identity, using costume, props and make-up to mask both to transform and reveal their subjects. 
Sunday 6 May is the last day to see this show of new paintings by Isabel Young that re-work the conventions of still life introducing live animals as protagonists, subjects which have evolved from Young's observational work within zoos, reptile houses and aquariums. 
The inimitable Gary Fairfull - curator, entrepreneur and owner of the artists' late-night haunt 'Found' - has been threatening to open his gallery for a good while. Last Thursday it all came together - he brought the Bloomberg New Contemporaries artist Chris Barr to London for his first solo show in the city. The Found Gallery, petite with a gorgeous Georgian window overlooking Great Eastern Street, is ideal for this fine and unusual painting show. 
Recent history reconsidered - 'The Ghosts of Songs' is a new exhibition at Arnolfini, Bristol, revisits the work of one of the most influential underground British artist groups of the last twenty years, the Black Audio Film Collective.
'Last weekend those who were content to explore the already well-worn territory of Berlin - a city for men in makeup - made their 3rd annual spring pilgrimage to the great festival of intellectual joy known as "Gallery-Weekend-Berlin". Party lists were compared, openings were held in bulk. I headed out for round three of galleries on an Arctic-sun Sunday afternoon, after a two-day party blur. 
"This Is A Work Of Fiction, my one man SOLO show, opens May 11th at Schroeder Romero. The work isn't that important. I could, say, pack my shit into a can, take nude photos of my beautiful friends at parties, or make BIG EXPRESSIONISTIC paintings of monsters, but it wouldn't really matter. WHAT matters is that someone says "Did you see that shit on 27th Street?! He called Dash a jerk-off'." It's REALLY important that Shamim and Roberta drop by. I mean, otherwise what's the point? I can't keep sitting around my studio getting drunk and yelling at my assistants forever, can I? I need some affirmation of my BRILLIANCE like a Times review or a Biennial nod. While I have probably just doomed myself to insignificance by ASKING for those things, aren't they the very indicators of success?" -- William Powhida
It was Old Homo Week at the powerHouse Arena bookstore in the newly posh DUMBO section of Brooklyn. The exhibition was entitled, "'The Male Gaze " and the powerHouse publishing house pulled out its queer backlist and opened up at night for a dozen or so homosexuals of the artistic persuasion to show their wares in the gallery/shop/covert cruising area, with works by Ryan McGinley (below), Slava Mogutin, and Jim Bidgood making the biggest splash. 
Opening today is Chitra Ganesh's first solo exhibition in which she presents a collection of photographs, works on paper, digital collages and paintings. Classical motifs such as idyllic landscapes and nudes are interrupted by winged scalpels flying past three-headed women in a tartly colored panorama, reminiscent of a Homeric epic, and in a triptych of staged photographs a nude, wearing a Cyclops mask adorned with ribbon-lined panties, participates in rituals requiring a bloody offering bowl, disprportionately large eyes and other surreal props. 
Nothing to do with that other festival by the same name, but there's a camera-holding crowd awaiting this one as well. Opening in a few days, DocumentaMadrid will bring together 102 documentary feature films and shorts, including a special section dedicated to American protest docs and a retrospective of Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl's entire back catalogue, a call for super-8 films for a street party, big prizes, and more.
Film-maker Bill Rabinovitch remembers his friend the writer Kurt Vonnegut, who died in April. Vonnegut, whose wife was an artist, often went to art openings in New York and was deeply sympathetic towards artists. When Rabinovitch decided to make a film about Jackson Pollock he asked Vonnegut to take part in it. The film which stars Barnaby Ruhe as Jackson Pollock, Lisa Renko as Lee Krasner (below), and Dennis Oppenheim and Vito Acconci as themselves. 
We have launched a new section on this magazine featuring essays on art and artists by the world's leading writers, critics and curators. Our first three essays are by the critic and curator Dave Hickey (below), writing about Dexter Dalwood, the writer Alain de Botton on Edward Hopper, and the critic and artist Joyce Korotkin on drawings by Robert Longo. New essays will be added regularly to this section - look out for upcoming essays by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Neville Wakefield and Jerry Saltz. 
Alison Brady graduated in 2006 with an MFA from the School Of Visual Arts in New York. With the help of simple props - fishing wire, salami slices, filthy bed sheets - she arranges homemade Grand Guignol scenes, where friends and strangers are invited into a performance of the artist's projection into an absurd reality. The result is both a humourous and disturbing body of work that explores unconscious emotions, desires and sexual compulsions. 
Antony Gormley's standing figures (below) begin to appear on London's rooftops, a Banksy sculpture could be yours for £200,000, Documenta 12 is still in need of funds for the June epic art event, and various items by Francis Bacon retrieved from the trash fetch almost £1 million. 
'After running into Anthony Haden-Guest, the Grand Pooba of art gossip ("My gosh, did Prada ship you in from New York?", "No, London", "I'm just glad that Hezbollah let you free"), we broke off for a fancy affair involving a four-course white wine lunch at Milan's fine and fancy 'da Giacomo', where I sat next to an exhausted Rehberger (sleepless in Milan, hard at work), comedian Florian, and the tall and fetching Mark van Huisseling from Vanity Fair Germany. Anthony Haden-Guest was sitting at the far corner next to arte povera mega-curator Germano Celant and a handful of editors from magazines one sees on the newsstands but never reads.' 
As part of Photomonth Kracow's varied programme of events, a new show at the Kunsthalle Bunkier will explore the work of a set of photographers from Germany, the special guest country at this year's festival, with two things in common: they all come from the state of North-Rhine-Westphalia and also share a concern for documenting transitory, passing phenomena, the sort of things that, whether minutely or monumentally, may be most indicative of a time or a place but are anything but permanent.
Paul P. is sharing his latest pastel and watercolor works under the Proustian rubric 'Place Names, the Place.' P. is known for his artful and tender portrayals of beautiful boys culled from vintage porn, memory and wishes. In the current show he has for the first time placed figures in a realistic landscape. Venetian architecture frames the nude or nearly nude models in smaller works in watercolor. The boys are farther away and the images exquisitely small as if we're peering through the wrong end of a telescope. Like Proust's alter ego remembering lost time, P. longs for a perfect world in which boys in languorous postures live in every other doorway without the specter of AIDS . 
It's not often you get to purchase a whole building of prime real-estate right in the middle of London's artworld just so you can support your friends' artistic bent. But this is exactly what Alex Dellal, the grandson of 'Black Jack', the property and gambling tycoon, has done - his inaugural exhibition opened last Friday at 20 Hoxton Square. 
This exhibition, which takes its title from a Kylie Minogue song, brings together 11 international contemporary artists whose practices involve assembling objects that connote feelings of nostalgia. As with Kylie's song, their work speaks of our relationship with familiar things, particularly referring to the ways in which our personal and shared cultural memories are sparked by material objects, like those brought about by a lyrical refrain. 
To celebrate Seth Price and Kelley Walker's first major exhibition in the UK, Modern Art Oxford has organised a series of talks and screenings, as well as a very limited edition artist's multiple.
Last week's sale of discarded works and ephemera Francis Bacon wanted to throw away raises some moral issues. Like the recent publication of a discarded-then-rescued Truman Capote novel, the artist actually disliked the work and did not want it seen. In the past we've considered the philosophical enigma of whether a Rembrandt is a Rembrandt covered in burlap and stored in a basement. Is a slashed and discarded Francis Bacon studio sweeping still a Bacon if it was dug up from the bottom of a trash bin in the name of profit? 
At this year's San Francisco Film Festival, don't miss the chance to see Jack Youngelson and Peter Sutherland's documentary about the photographer Tierney Gearon whose work came to the public's attention when photographs of her naked children were shown at the Saatchi Gallery in 2001 and the British police threatend to close down the exhibition. 
Anya Gallaccio treats organic objects as though they were vessels protecting kernels of human sentiment. The cycle of growth and decay provides an earthy backdrop to her minimal sculptural manifestations that require maximal effort to make. In her current exhibition she continues her investigation of materiality and the formal constraints of sculptural presentation in a series of sock-like constructions, giant macramé 'drawings' and delicate casts of fruits and fauna. 
Copyright 2003-2008 © The Saatchi Gallery :
London Contemporary Art Gallery
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