Exhibition of the week
Peter Kennard
Britain’s unofficial war artist has been making pacifist art for decades, turning Constable’s Hay Wain into a CND protest image and more recently creating Tony Blair’s Iraq War selfie. Give montage a chance.
• Imperial War Museum, London from 14 May until 30 May 2016.
Other exhibitions this week
Cornelia Parker
Alongside its excellent exhibition on Magna Carta’s history, the British Library has commissioned a new artwork by Parker about this 800-year-old assertion of human rights.
• British Library, London, 15 May-24 July.
If Tate Modern was Musee de la danse?
Choreographer Boris Charmatz stages two days of unexpected moments and events throughout Tate Modern.
• Tate Modern, London, from 15-16 May. Some events must be booked.
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
An examination of the brilliant French emigre who brought avant-garde energy to Britain on the eve of the first world war.
• Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, until 21 June.
We’ve Got Mail II
Postcard art by Sophie Calle, Carl Andre, Richard Hamilton and others is juxtaposed with historic Llandudno seaside postcards.
• Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno, until 5 July.
Masterpiece of the week
John Constable – The Hay Wain (1821)
Mocked, parodied (not least by Peter Kennard – see above) and often seen as a chocolate-box cliche, this bit of painted Britain is a subtle, ever-changing masterpiece with its own microclimate of rustic warmth and the promise of rain later.
Image of the week
What we learned this week
How Grayson Perry made a Taj Mahal for Essex
That Sarah Lucas has several penises
How an artist did reverse espionage on the NSA
That Karl Marx has taken over the billionaire playground that is Venice Biennale
What life’s like at America’s 250-acre sanctuary for liberals, activists and pagans
That Antony Gormley is only just learning how to make sculpture
That Victor Enrich has made an incredible folding, exploding hotel
About Princess Diana and Liza Minelli’s after-party antics
That Eileen Gray’s lost legend of 20th-century architecture has been resurrected on the Côte d’Azur
What humans look like when made over as Barbie and Ken
How you can take a road trip into the Communist past
And finally ...
Want to see Gilbert & George in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist? Buy tickets now
