Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low's portraits of circus performers at Blackpool Pleasure Beach are full of muscular beauty and melancholy sadness. At the Lowry in Salford from 16 January to 11 April 2010
Photograph: Anderson & Low
Campaigners working across art, fashion and technology are defying capitalism and industry with communal art-and-crafts projects such as knitting and rosehip foraging. The results are on show at the Arnolfini in Bristol until 14 February 2010
Photograph: Carl Newland
Coates attempts to solve social problems ranging from hair loss to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via a range of film, performance and sound composition. Catch him at Milton Keynes Gallery until 4 April 2010
Photograph: PR
Friend's photographs of immigration removal centres and her recorded interviews with detainees paint a haunting picture of the fear and uncertainty at the edges of a nation. At Bedford Creative Arts until 13 March 2010
Photograph: Melanie Friend
Featuring Jackson Pollock and Umberto Boccioni, this exhibition invites artist Lutz Becker to present modes of drawing that resist social convention and repression. At Kettle's Yard in Cambridge until 14 March 2010
Photograph: PR
Harlequin diamonds, snaking figures of eight ... Byrne splinters shapes into swirling spectral patterns, bewitching the eye with human faces and esoteric symbols. At Vilma Gold, London, from 16 January to 17 March 2010
Photograph: PR
Sleepy rural existence is pitted against the world of urban sex workers, climate refugees and the technologically super-charged in this panoramic exhibition of photography from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. On display at London's Whitechapel Gallery from 21 January to 11 April 2010
Photograph: PR
'I'm at war with the obvious,' the photographer Eggleston once declared. So, from newspaper yellowing under weeds to tired curtains billowing in a burst of light, his images attempt to make the everyday briefly extraordinary. At Victoria Miro gallery in London until 27 February 2010
Photograph: William Eggleston
