The Alternative Guide to the Universe
Self-taught artists and fringe physicists, dodgy dreamers and visionary engineers – all of them dare to think differently in this latest instalment of the Museum of Everything's explorations of outsider art that creates Wild science, eccentricity, and a world turned inside-out. Hayward Gallery, London SE1 (southbankcentre.co.uk), 11 June to 1 September.
Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life
Reappraising Lowry not as an eccentric loner but as an artist who drew as much from 19th-century French art as from his daily grind as a rent collector: goodbye matchstick men, hello social commentator painting the mad and the miserable. Tate Britain, London SW1 (tate.org.uk), 25 June to 20 October.
Manchester international festival
The festival is always great at innovative crossover projects, this time including speculative works overseen by uber-curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist; a new seven-part film project called River of Fundament by American artist Matthew Barney, with composer Jonathan Bepler; the return of Turner prize-nominated Tino Sehgal; and a new collaboration between Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack and the undefinably brilliant film-maker Adam Curtis. Various venues, Manchester (mif.co.uk), 4 to 21 July.
The Spirit of Utopia
Pottery workshops by Chicago artist Theaster Gates, a sanitorium for stressed urbanites by Mexican artist Pedro Reyes, a hypnotist's view of financial meltdown in a film by Danish collective Superflex, and Turkish collective Ha Za Vu Zu invite us to make a racket in alternative futures imagined by 10 artists and collectives.Whitechapel Gallery, London E1 (whitechapelgallery.org), 4 July to 5 September.
Thomas Scheibitz: One –Time Pad
Over 200 works from the last five years by a German artist whose work looks weirdly graphic and strangely painterly, even when it's sculpture. Scheibitz describes his peculiarly frozen semi-abstractions of body parts and buildings as "conceptual painting". Isn't it always? Baltic, Gateshead (balticmill.com), 26 July to 3 November.
No Foreign Lands: Peter Doig
The first major Scottish show by Edinburgh-born Doig focuses on paintings from the last decade that reflect years spent between Trinidad, London and Germany. His paintings are filled with oblique references and unsettling atmosphere, local colour and characters. Fetching mind-boggling prices these days, he still tries to keep it real. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh (nationalgalleries.org), 3 August to 3 November.
Gabriel Orozco, Edinburgh art festival
The Mexican artist is known for many kinds of work: from drawings on skulls and whale skeletons, to moulded clay hearts and chessboards filled only with knights. But as well as a great feel for materials, Orozco has an abiding interest in geometry. This show, curated by Briony Fer, thinks through his working processes, and his recurrent use of the circular motif. Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (fruitmarket.co.uk), 1 August to 20 October.
