Funky temples, blood sculptures and piles and piles of guano – the week in art

Rich faeces … Peruvian booby birds on the Chincha islands in Dinh Q Lê’s The Colony. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist

Exhibition of the week

Dinh Q Lê – The Colony
Piles and piles of poo accumulate in the Vietnamese artist’s latest work, but don’t worry, it’s a video piece, which focuses on the historic trade in guano – the fertile faeces of the Peruvian booby birds, which colonise the remote Chincha islands off Peru’s south-west coast. Artangel’s commission premiered at Birmingham’s Ikon gallery earlier this year. Now Londoners can get a whiff too.
• 133 Rye Lane, London, 25 August-9 October.

Also showing

Jo Spence
Superb survey of the late photographer including self-portraiture dating from the last decade of her life. Spence illuminated the personal in the political and, in her final work, documented her own road to death.
• Stills gallery, Edinburgh, until 16 October.

Constellations
The constellations in question are the chains of influence and inspiration between British and American artists. The result: a true “galaxy of modern art history”.
• Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, ongoing.

Unseen: London, Paris, New York, 1930s-60s
Your last chance to see three great cities of the modern world documented by three photographers: Wolfgang Suschitzky, Dorothy Bohm and Neil Libbert.
• Ben Uri Gallery, London, until 28 Aug

Masterpiece of the week

JMW Turner’s Dido building Carthage, or The Rise of the Carthaginian Empire (1815). Photograph: National Gallery/Getty Images

When the sun has disappeared behind a cloud, it’s worth a trip to bathe in the warmth of this gorgeous vision. Influenced by the French artist Claude and hung in perpetuity opposite his work in a small room of just four paintings at the National Gallery, Turner’s painting never ceases to lift your spirits – and eyes, to the very top of that Carthaginian hill.
• National Gallery, London.

Image of the week

Meet the man painting Kenya’s mosques and churches and temples yellow

Mellow yellow … the Baps Swaminarayan temple in Nairobi. Photograph: Mohammed Altoum

What we learned

A cliff plunge, a buried grandad, a Rio carnival queen … top photographers, including Nadav Kander and Ellen von Unwerth, share their best summer shots

Marina Abramović responds to allegations of racism in her new memoir

Amnesty and Forensic Architecture team up to show us inside Assad’s Saydnaya prison, with the help of ‘ear-witness’ testimony from former detainees

Rosana Cade reveals the radical art of holding hands with strangers

An altarpiece by Thomas Hardy has been discovered in Windsor church

Here’s a clotted history of blood art from Marc Quinn to Johnny Depp

Terry Pratchett’s illustrator of choice, Paul Kidby, on working on Discworld

John Claridge talks us through his portrait of Chet Baker, lost in memory

Fancy yourself a Pablo Bicasso? Take a look at this ballpoint art

Why Loris Gréaud and Willem Dafoe made a film about art few will see

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Polaroid photographs are to be auctioned at Bonhams

Beyond the Olympics: see Brazil through David Alan Harvey’s eyes

These stylised portraits of Australian women of colour make you look twice

Photographer Elliott Erwitt is the subject of a major retrospective in Texas

Two men have been arrested over an attempted theft of a Banksy copy

Ex-Buzzcocks drummer John Maher photographs abandoned crofts in the Outer Hebrides

‘Palio di Siena is not a horse race; it’s a way of life’ – Christian Sinibaldi’s photo essay

Take a look at the worthy winners of the World Illustration awards 2016

Julius Shulman captures the visionary buildings of mid-century America

And readers share their own photographs of modernist masterpieces.

Get involved

Side by side – your art on the theme of juxtaposition
K is for knowledge – share your new artwork now

And finally

Follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign