David Hockney
Britain’s most famous living painter is a master of the portrait, capturing entire decades and states of mind in such iconic works as Mr And Mrs Clark And Percy and Beverly Hills Housewife. His new series 82 Portraits And 1 Still-Life paints a picture of the 21st century through portraits of friends including architect Frank Gehry and artist John Baldessari. Everyone poses in the same lemon-yellow upholstered chair as Hockney eyeballs them in often delicious detail.
Royal Academy, W1, to 2 Oct
Jorge Otero-Pailos
The medieval and Victorian Palace of Westminster is no longer the secure centre of democracy it once was. The mother of parliaments is suffering from architectural decay at the same time as respect for parliamentarians nosedives. Artangel’s site-specific commission in Westminster Hall is timely in its macabre sense of history: Otero-Pailos has created a 50-metre-long translucent Latex cast of an internal wall, laden with centuries of dust and dirt.
Palace of Westminster, SW1, to 1 Sep
Liverpool Biennial
What is art now? Is it a representation of the world, a question about it, or is the purpose of art to change that world? If that sounds nebulous, so is quite a lot of art. What is certain is that art has never before broken quite so many disciplinary boundaries. Liverpool’s Biennial offers ample opportunity to explore those incarnations, from an installation about the Large Hadron Collider by Andreas Angelidakis to artists’ films at the old ABC Cinema, and a bus decorated by local schoolchildren.
Various venues, Sat to 16 Oct
David Bomberg
Compared with continental Europe, there weren’t many really exciting British artists in the early 20th century, but Bomberg was one of them. This exhibition explores his art on the centenary of the Battle of the Somme, in which he fought. It’s a chance to encounter a true modernist who saw the savage heart of his age.
Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne, to 11 Sep
Etel Adnan
This Beirut-born poet and painter has responded to war and crisis over a long lifetime. By showing her colourful paintings alongside films, tapestries and texts, this exhibition reveals a poignant tension between sensuality and reality, the freedom of abstract art and the horrors of contemporary history.
Serpentine Sackler Gallery, W2, to 11 Sep
