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The Travelling Gallery, touring Scotland 12 August – 29 November
The Travelling Gallery's latest mobile art exhibition, 'The Drawing Room', is a celebration and exploration of the art of drawing. Beaches – sandy, stony, remote and resort – are the theme of Rachel Bevan Baker's eleven short animations. Read on…
Reviewed by: Kirsty Walker
Milton Keynes Gallery 12 July – 1 September
Rock music, through its evolution has become more and more of a social barometer. Its indicators of taste and orientation now bleed across the generations. Social classes can be divided into glam, metal, punk, goth, grunge or indie tendencies – Read on…
Reviewed by: Roy Exley
Prenelle Gallery, West India Quay, Docklands, London 2 August – 6 September
You've seen the lifestyle sections in the broadsheets – now see the show. The recently converted Dutch Barge Prins, moored at West India Quay in east London, is home to the Prenelle Gallery. To one side looms Canary Wharf tower, to the other Read on…
Reviewed by: Lucy Kimbell
An artist's recipe book
Oh God no? an artists' version of Nigella Bites, all sun-dried tomatoes and comfy domesticity. Fear not, Space cooks is more like Grub on a grant with lashings and lashings of alcohol. SPACE studios commissioned over 100 artists, including Bridget Read on…
Reviewed by: Susannah Thompson
The Economist Plaza, London 17 July – 8 September
Tucked away off St James's Street is Kevin Osmond's Disposable and within the foyer of the Economist building, Andrew Dodds' What can be imagined, can be created. Osmond's piece makes clever use of disposable white plastic cups – apparently the Read on…
Reviewed by: Liz Holder
Spacex Gallery, Exeter 3 July – 31 August
The medium is clay – the message think again. Three separate installations involving three different states of mind, with three differing effects. Paul Astbury offers unfired wet clay objects, often mass-produced ornaments or domestic crockery, Read on…
Reviewed by: John Furse
The Gallery, Stratford-Upon-Avon 5 July – 11 August
As part of the Spirit of Friendship Festival celebrating the Commonwealth Games, Canadian artist Jen Hamilton and British artist Jen Southern combined forces to create 'Distance made good', a locally orientated project with a suitably global Read on…
Reviewed by: John Cornall
Gasworks Gallery, London 28 June – 11 August
Geoffrey Farmer's video work Boss log – the first and last piece seen as you enter the space – sets the scene for this show of work by three Vancouver-based artists. An episode from The Beachcombers, one of Canada's most exported TV Read on…
Reviewed by: Simon Webb
Arnolfini, Bristol 6 July – 8 September
The second of two consecutive shows which take painting as their starting point, 'View Finder' sets out to explore representations of the landscape and notions of the picturesque in contemporary culture. The more adventurous visitor will find it Read on…
Reviewed by: Emma Maiden
Venues across north west England
The University of Liverpool Art Gallery is tucked away in a nineteenth century terraced house in Abercromby Square. It is an unassuming home to a fascinating, eclectic collection of paintings, prints, drawings, porcelain, clocks and silverware. Read on…
Reviewed by: Brendan Fletcher
Site Gallery, Sheffield 8 June – 20 July
Maria Marshall's video When I grow up, I want to be a cooker showed her two-year old son apparently smoking a cigarette. The carefully constructed image, shown here as a night-time projection on Site Gallery's exterior window, not only mocks the Read on…
Reviewed by: David Kennedy
Beaconsfield, London 30 May – 7 July
It is always either invidious or insulting to compare one artist to another and Markus Copper probably wouldn't want comparisons to the perhaps corny, rather commercial Swiss Surrealist HR Giger. But it isn't just the sheer eccentricity of his Read on…
Reviewed by: Morgan Falconer
Contemporary Applied Arts, London 14 June – 27 July
'New Glass' draws together the sculptural work of six graduate makers who explore glass using a range of processes and techniques. Koichiro Yamamoto originally trained as a designer of functional objects in his native Japan. It is his interest in Read on…
Reviewed by: Hilary Williams
The Changing Room, Stirling 8 June – 27 July
When the atom bomb was being tested in Nevada, Americans were so naively delighted by it that for a time mushroom cloud hairdos were all the rage. I was reminded of this when I visited Robert Orchardson's first solo exhibition, 'News from Nowhere'. Read on…
Reviewed by: Kirsty Walker
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds 1 June – 1 September
Sometimes you wonder whether it is a universal truth that total freedom stifles creativity rather than inspiring it. In many ways, The Henry Moore Institute could be described as possessing such freedom. It is funded from the deceased sculptor's Read on…
Reviewed by: Simon Morrissey
Norwich Gallery, Norwich School of Art and Design
2 May – 8 June
On my way into 'Outwardbound' I see what looks like bunting strung between Norwich Gallery and the art school across the street – it's actually underwear. 'Outwardbound' presents four artists' projects that explore art practice outside Read on…
Reviewed by: Natasha Soobramanien
The Crossley Gallery, Dean Clough Galleries, Halifax 13 April – 30 June
In the early 1980s Dean Clough provided a template for urban regeneration. Its mix of business units, art galleries, artists' studios, theatres, cafés, bars and restaurants brought life and vigour to a redundant industrial mill complex in Read on…
Reviewed by: Brendan Fletcher
Bridgwater Docks, Somerset
3, 4 and 5 May
As the sun sets on Bridgwater docks, people are starting to gather. Something is brewing. Metallic sounds diffuse dimly from open windows – a specially-recorded track played back obligingly by local people from their nearby apartments, cars and Read on…
Reviewed by: Stephanie Delcroix
Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham 7 May – 29 June
In the eyes of post-modern theory, ego as the generator of meaning in art is anathema. Modernist painting has received bad press for years in this regard because of its supposed connection to self-expression, but this has sometimes seemed a sweeping Read on…
Reviewed by: John Cornall
Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast 11 April – 25 May
Appropriating the word 'appropriation' for an exhibition title is a refreshingly impertinent statement to make and no other venue in these parts could be more suited for such a show than Ormeau Baths Gallery, whose very marque owes its existence to Read on…
Reviewed by: Gavin Weston
Matt's Gallery, London 17 April – 9 June
An inviting pink hue radiates from a neon heart that marks the entrance to this installation of new paintings by Jo Bruton: the result of the artist's five-month residency at Matt's Gallery. By contrast, inside the white cube space a sense of Read on…
Reviewed by: Louise Coysh
Boscombe Pier, Bournemouth
29 March 2002 – 30 March 2003
Muf architecture/art once again demonstrate their commitment to developing the potential pleasures of public space in Seducer, a new light installation sited at the end of Boscombe Pier in Bournemouth. Given the area's history as a place of rest and Read on…
Reviewed by: Rosemary Shirley
Shire Pottery Gallery and Studios, Alnwick 8 April – 13 May
As someone who gets a bit out of sorts if there is not a stretch of tarmac nearby, I admire artists who live and find creative sustenance in rural areas. 'Matterart' focused on two artists who do just that. Pauline Burbidge and Charles Poulsen live Read on…
Reviewed by: Stephen Palmer
Bradford Gallery, 22 April - 17 May, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, 20 April - 26 May
A collaborative project between artists from Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds and Bradford, 'Hibrida' seeks to revive the spirit of the Bradford Print Biennale in a series of four major exhibitions. Exhibited across two venues, this exhibition – Read on…
Reviewed by: Justine Brooks
G39 and Chapter, Cardiff 23 February – 30 March
'Ffresh 3' was an open submission show for all artists who are Welsh, living in Wales, or who graduated from college in Wales within the last three years. It claimed to be a sophisticated version of the open submission show. Although by no means an Read on…
Reviewed by: Louise Short
Throgmorton Restaurant and Bar, London 15 March, 22 March and 5 April
Late Friday evening I find myself standing behind the London Stock Exchange shouting at my friend. She's screaming at me for giving her phone number to a man in a bar. "But no" I yell, "I wouldn't really give him your number. One of the digits was Read on…
Reviewed by: Lucy Kimbell
www.swansong.tv 20 March
On Wednesday 20 March, the artist-led organisation Somewhere, realised its biggest endeavour to date – a live webcast entitled TV Swansong. The culmination of three-years' preparation, TV Swansong took to the air from 15:45 to 21:00 GMT with a Read on…
Reviewed by: Chris Brown
The Gallery, Stratford-upon-Avon 25 February – 7 April
For nearly ten years now artists Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio have made a career from other people's stories. Working closely with a range of different audiences and within a variety of social contexts, these stories of the everyday and Read on…
Reviewed by: Michael Stanley
How it was - Harris Museum & Art Gallery, Preston 26 January – 23 March
Retraces - Matt's Gallery, London 23 January – 17 March
Time was that art inspired feelings of devotion, pity, love, pride or patriotism. Willie Doherty's work, based on his intimate knowledge of his hometown Derry, unfurls for us the topography of quiet despair – one of uncertainty and division, Read on…
Reviewed by: Jo Manby
Site Gallery, Sheffield 16 February – 6 April
Making the claim that art is little more than a conjuring trick, 'Con Art' presents its audience with a barrage of successive art-tricks in which they are made willing participants to the illusions placed before them. Most dramatically, Site Gallery Read on…
Reviewed by: Justine Brooks
