Tate Modern's new performance space, The Tanks, gears up for the beginning of a 15 week festival of live art in the industrial underground chambers beneath the cavernous building. Billed as the world's first museum galleries permanently dedicated to live art, the Tanks open next week (click to link to their full programme) with many free events and an impressive line up of work providing a showcase for live performance, commissions and a range of audio, film and dance events.
In galleries across the UK there's a great selection of art this week, including what promises to be a fascinating collection of prints and source materials in Abstract Impressions at Alan Cristea, with their mixed exhibition further up the road at No.34 Cork Street including work by Hodgkin, Hockney, Vicken Parsons and Richard Serra.
Curator Lisa Le Feuvre has been installing her selection of thirty works of sculpture by Sarah Lucas at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. Exploring her use of materials across two decades, Ordinary Things offers an analysis which focuses on Lucas' sculptural processes rather than her reputation for sensational effect, and is supported by a series of lectures. And in Middlesbrough, Julian Stair's ceramics at mima is one of the highlights of their exhibition programme this year. A specialist in the critical origins of English studio pottery, Stair has made a series of funerary works drawing on the symbolic language of ceramic vessels.
It's worth keeping an eye on @isendyouthis over on Twitter, as we've been tweeting some links to the new Olafur Eliasson project Little Sun which opens soon in Turbine Hall, and like to keep you connected to all sorts of interesting artworld snippets. Or there's the artdiary with our blogs alongside art opportunities and resources for artists - if we're missing you, please let us know: editorial@istsencydyoutYhmhis.com
artexhibition: highlights
 | Abstract Impressions - Josef Albers, Naum Gabo, Ben Nicholson Alan Cristea Gallery
London W1S 3NU 12/07/2012 to 10/08/2012 Josef Albers, Naum Gabo and Ben Nicholson each believed, in their own way, in the transformative power of abstract art. They each came to printmaking at different stages of their careers and, in each case, their prints have endured as an integral part of their oeuvre. Abstract Impressions showcases close to 50 prints alongside source material including original printing blocks, trial proofs and preparatory sketches revealing the working methods of these celebrated artists first-hand. |
 | Simon Patterson - Under Cartel Haunch of Venison
London W1S 1ST 13/07/2012 to 31/08/2012 This exhibition of new work includes a series of photographic diptychs, entitled Under Cartel, of equestrian statues from around the world; each photographic pairing represents the exchange of one sculpture for another. The second section of the exhibition is a grid display of paintings featuring the names of silent movie stars, which is a continuation of the Name Paintings series that Patterson has worked on since 1987. |
 | Surface II Crypt Gallery
London 13/07/2012 to 22/07/2012 A multi-disciplinary exhibition, 26 artists use a range of media to explore the notion of surface, with each practitioner demonstrating an individual interpretation and perspective by exploring the inescapable, immediate and continuous surface of walls that turn corners, follow corridors, entering recesses and alcoves within The Crypt Gallery space. |
 | Tristano di Robilant - White River Faggionato Fine Art
London W1S 4JR 12/07/2012 to 31/08/2012
Open Monday - Friday 10.00 am - 5.30 pm The exhibition presents eight new glass sculptures and a large ceramic wall piece. In these works di Robilant continues his investigation into the nature of glass and its paradoxical state: a substance that is both a liquid and a solid. His process of enquiry is rooted in the establishment of an archetype, an almost Platonic ideal that is transformed through the necessary communication between artist and master glassmaker, designer and executor. |
 | UNCOMMON GROUND Flowers East
London E2 8DP 12/07/2012 to 01/09/2012
Open Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm Uncommon Ground is an exploration of environmental interventions in contemporary photography. Inspired by the work of Keith Arnatt and Gabriel Orozco, this exhibition aims to obscure the intersection between photographs of observed reality and artistically altered reality. Environment is taken in its broadest sense: natural ecosystems, urban and suburban space, domestic interiors, industrial landscapes and even political arenas. A selection of represented and invited artists’ work spanning the last decade, across a variety of international locations. |
 | Julian Stair - Quietus: The vessel, death and the human body mima
Middlesbrough TS1 2AZ 13/07/2012 to 11/11/2012 This major solo exhibition by Julian Stair, one of the world's most acclaimed ceramicists, explores the containment of the human body after death. It features a collection of Stair's very beautiful funerary vessels, some of which are almost 2 metres in height. Stair explores different rituals around death and burial across civilizations and ages and how this can be understood as a celebration of life. |
 | Sarah Lucas - Ordinary Things Henry Moore Institute
Leeds LS1 3AH 19/07/2012 to 21/10/2012 Ordinary Things takes Sarah Lucas' (b. 1962) recent series of sculptures 'NUDS' (2009-) as a starting point, looking forward and backward across an artistic practice that has engaged with the possibilities of sculpture for over two decades. |
 | Katja Strunz - Dynamic Fatigue Test Modern Institute
Glasgow G1 5QN 14/07/2012 to 18/08/2012 Central to this exhibition is Strunz’s investigation of the materials the works are made of and the ability of those materials to absorb and resist physical stress. This is evident in the folds and bends imposed on the many clock-faces and sheets of metal Strunz has used. In the work Dynamic Fatigue Test by pounding against the workpiece (2009- 2012), a chain with a number of metal fragments is drawn around the gallery on a wire. Strunz’s collage works capture the dynamism of the sculptural work, harnessing their energy into a single plane. |
 | Gary Hume - Flashback Jerwood Gallery
Hastings TN34 3DW 14/07/2012 to 23/09/2012 Hume was the winner of the Jerwood Painting Prize in 1997 and was elected as a Royal Academician in 2001. This exhibition features a range of paintings and sculptures produced by the Turner Prize-nominated artist. |
 | Olivia Plender - Rise Early, Be Industrious Arnolfini
Bristol BS1 4QA 14/07/2012 to 09/09/2012 Rise Early, Be Industrious offers a series of colourful stage-like sets that invite investigation and playful interaction, whilst focussing on different ideas about education, with special attention to experimental models, their histories and contexts. Drawing on examples such as the educational remit of the BBC, the modern Spiritualist movement in the early 20th century and World's Exhibitions, Olivia Plender is interested in the specific ways in which societies imagine knowledge and its transmission. |
 | Daniel Meadows - Early Photographic Works Ffotogallery
Cardiff CF5 1QE 14/07/2012 to 08/09/2012 In the early 1970s Daniel Meadows embarked on a journey to create a social snapshot of Britain, breaking with photography tradition and infusing the medium with new energies and ways of seeing. Meadows’ resulting work displays complexity and passion and confers a personal and sometimes deeply autobiographical imprint. |
Click here to see the full list
