Beginning with an interview with a real African refugee, Omer Fast's gripping film installation Nostalgia works a total metamorphosis on his story. Detail by detail, it's refined here, exaggerated there, transforming into a big-budget sci-fi epic, where an underclass take a brutal journey through subterranean tunnels, escaping a desolate continent for a better life in the developed world. At Arnolfini from 5 May to 1 July 2012 Photograph: PR
Eric Baudelaire has created a complex, layered documentary installation tackling two Japanese Red Army associates and their relationship with images: May Shigenobu, the founding member's daughter, and avant garde film-maker and activist Masao Adachi. Above, Eric Baudelaire's Fusako Shigenobu Family Album, 27 photographs, 2012, detail. At Gasworks from 11 May to 22 July 2012 Photograph: PR
David Batchelor revels in the pure joy of colour, but he tends to go for strictly artificial hues. Like seaside amusements whose lights outshine the tawdry reality, his cheap and cheerful creations seem a perfect fit for Brighton's visual arts festival. Above, David Batchelor's Angular 1 (detail). At various venues, 5 to 27 May 2012 Photograph: PR
Twelve internationally renowned contemporary artists including Jeremy Deller, Tania Kovats, Dorothy Cross, Alison Turnbull and Alexis Deacon are given free rein on the Galápagos Islands. They make art rather than ecological science, of course, and art as an irreverent, obliquely questioning affair of make-believe. Above, Alexis Deacon's Tree Beast, 2011. At Bluecoat until 1 July 2012
Photograph: Courtesy the artist
Turner prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon presents highly focused video studies of the trance-like concentration of two virtuoso performers, conductor James Conlon and footballer Zinedine Zidane. Above, a still from Zidane, 2006. At Warwick Arts Centre util 23 June 2012
Photograph: Douglas Gordon/The Artangel Collection
This show about writing and drawing seldom features anything created with pencil and paper. Office equipment is subverted, from Carl Andre's typed concrete poetry, where words make shapes on the page, to Fiona Banner's reconfigured typewriter, with a single expletive spelt out multiple times across its keys. Above, Fiona Banner's Mother, 2009, Reconstructed Typewriter with paper. At the Drawing Room, SE1, from 10 May to 30 June 2012
Photograph: Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London
Mika Rottenberg's first major UK exhibition comes on like a shanty town display of bizarre rituals and perverse futilities. Cobbled from scraps of wood, her architectural constructions house video screenings featuring stars such as the statuesque erotic dancer Bunny Sue Glamazon and the professional female 'squasher' Queen Raqui, who weighs in at over 600lbs. Above, Dough (video still). At Nottingham Contemporary, 5 May to 1 July 2012
Photograph: Courtesy of Nicole Klagsbrun and Andrea Rosen Gallery
Jock Mooney manages to lift the grotesque out of cliche and into a carnivalesque sense of the ridiculous. His Vom-Shit Dog, sculpted from craft shop plastic modelling compound and daubed with the nauseous gloss of decorator's enamel, goes all boggle-eyed as it spouts pink liquid eruptions from either end. Above, Vom Shit Dog, 2010. At Vane from 10 May to 30 June 2012 Photograph: PR
