Sport and conceptual art rub shoulders in this engaging group show. Aleksandra Mir provides the most spectacular piece: 2,529 trophies acquired from Sicily’s local champions. Most of the artists, however, choose to focus on the spectators, with sport as a black hole into which we pour our dreams and fears; see Paul Pfeiffer’s film collage about the TV cameras’ fixation with the moment when a fallen football player writhes about in agony. The most surreally poignant work, though, is by Ariel Orozco, whose photograph memorialises Perro Balon, a stray dog from Mexico City which became a neighbourhood hero when it was tattooed with a football pattern.
South London Gallery & Southwark Old Town Hall, SE5, to 14 September
SS
Aleksandra Mir's Triumph, 2,529 trophies, 2009.
Photograph: image courtesy the artist
All artists know the importance of lucky accidents in creating their work: creatives who use photography will sometimes be thrilled by a misprint that would be unacceptable to a “proper” photographer. But how to deliberately make use of chance? How can an artist set up a spontaneous scenario? Accidentally On Purpose poses and reflects on these quandaries through bemusingly inventive work from the likes of Clunie Reid, Ryan Gander and Emma Cocker. There’s an online project at accidentalpurpose.net, an Artefacts Of Failure display of unfinished and botched works, and a Medley Of Misadventure wall inviting messed-up contributions from the public.
QUAD, to 7 October
RC
Clunie Reid's Your Higher Plane Awaits, 2012
Photograph: PR
Perhaps like no other artist of his time, with the possible exception of pop artist Robert Rauschenberg, painter, photographer, composer, poet and writer Roth recognised the fact that a late-20th-century person would be bombarded with more images every day than any one at any time throughout history. Roth’s true-to-life realism took full account of that fact as he assembled multiple images and forms together in a thematic stream of consciousness that’s far more accurately composed than it initially might appear. Thus, for Roth, his art became a continuous and instantaneous form of autobiography. So this first-ever public showing during the Edinburgh festival of his original collaged diaries promises to be something quite special.
Fruitmarket Gallery, Thursday to 14 October
RC
Notebook, 1967 (detail)
Photograph: courtesy Hauser & Wirth
South Kensington’s Exhibition Road ups its cultural game over the next week with a one-off festival of art, music and circus. Artists will create a Landscape Of Wonder, as the Road Show is subtitled, including young conceptualist Katie Paterson’s cast from an ancient meteorite, giving passersby a cosmic encounter on the kerb. In a nod to the Olympics, experimental theatre artist Graeme Miller will install sport commentators on rooftops to narrate the pedestrian action on the street (those observed can listen in via bespoke ear radios). Meanwhile, Tomás Libertiny will be busy making a sculpture inspired by beehives.
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Exhibition Road, SW7, to 5 August
Katie Paterson's Campo del Cielo, Field Of The Sky
Photograph: copyright Giorgia Polizzi
For an avowed atheist Jannis Kounellis is mysteriously capable of conjuring an almost spiritual aura from deceptively simple assemblages: soil, coal, beans, old sacks. The historical movement he’s most usually been associated with is arte povera, named after the rudimentary nature of the artists’ raw materials. Pieces here include a steel bed frame hung from a single hook in front of a rectangle of yellow painted wall; Untitled 1993 consists of three cathedral bells suspended at angles suggesting a resonant silence. It’s a mystery how he does it, staging tragic dramas by the precise metaphoric composition of otherwise banal props.
Tramway, to 23 September
RC
Untitled, 2004 installation view
Photograph: Manolis Baboussis
For three decades Lizzie Rowe has charted her transformation from man to transgender woman in a range of paintings and drawings that display a disarming honesty. An image of herself dolled up in a low-cut lace wedding dress comes across less as self-portraiture than as just one more stage in a meticulously planned and executed self-creation. Rowe’s painterly manner, with its lustrous impasto and reliance on plays of light and shadow, is more reminiscent of the paintings of Courbet or even Rembrandt than of any of her contemporaries. The untiring focus on domestic detail accrues a contemplative significance, yet nowhere does Rowe’s assured technical control disguise the obvious struggle of the transformation.
The Biscuit Factory, to 2 September
RC Photograph: PR
Teak sideboards, coffee tables, desks and cabinets made 60s ranges such as G-Plan famous. Michael Samuels makes them seem like so many blocks of Lego. His modernist creations become tottering towers or intricate 3D puzzles. In place of the pared-down functionality, rectangular frames, panels and boxes are stacked high on stool legs, like a camera with too many lenses; red and yellow laminated table-tops and the blue circle from an LED light become geometric abstractions. The real showstopper is Tragedy Of The Commons, an almost kaleidoscopic drinks cabinet punctuated with the zigzag silhouettes of Anglepoise lamps. Playing with form and dysfunction, its skin is a lovely shiny walnut, while its insides are rough and its bulk narrow.
Spacex, to 15 September
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Michael Samuels, Metabolist, 2011
Photograph: image courtesy Rokeby, London
Real-life X-Files and occult lore have long had artist Suzanne Treister hooked. While her own work rivals the conspiracy theorists for tangled tales, here she hands the reins over to the pros, those who explore the worlds of technology, telepathy and more. Situated in her specially created library and exhibition, a series of weekend talks kicks off today with professor Robert Rydall’s thoughts on world fairs and cultural domination. Future highlights include a lecture from the Obi Wan figure from The Men Who Stare At Goats, former US army lieutenant colonel Jim Channon, who pioneered the CIA’s notorious use of “remote viewers”.
Raven Row Gallery, E1, to 19 August
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Original world's fair postcard
Photograph: PR
