RA Magazine's pick of this week’s art events (19 - 25 July)

_{Sarah Morris, 'Academia Militar [Rio]', 2012. Household gloss on canvas. 84 1/4 x 84 1/4 in. (214 x 214 cm). © Sarah Morris. Photo: Ben Westoby. Courtesy: White Cube.} Sarah Morris
White Cube Bermondsey, until 29 September 2013
British-born artist Sarah Morris produces abstract paintings and figurative films inspired by the dynamism of the city and, in particular, the effects that architecture can have on individual psychology and social systems.

Morris applies household gloss paint in geometric patterns to evoke the surface sheen and rhythmic forms of urban structures.

Her new series of paintings – on view at White Cube Bermondsey from this week – feature shapes inspired by Rio’s modernist buildings and a palette immersed in the colours of Carnival and the Copacabana, and they are accompanied by her film of the Brazilian capital.

Aquatopia
Nottingham Contemporary, 20 July - 22 September 2013‏
Visitors to Nottingham Contemporary this summer will submerge themselves in how historic and contemporary artists – from J.M.W. Turner to Juergen Teller – have responded to the deep sea. The double-faceted idea of the Sublime, as wonder mixed with fear, is awash in the works (apologies: watery puns will end here).

_{JMW Turner, 'Sunrise with Sea Monsters', c.1845. © Tate, London 2012.}

Sea monsters seep into a splendid sunrise in Turner’s sumptuous canvas from 1845 (on loan from the Tate), while his Japanese contemporary Utagawa Kuniyoshi woodblocks a giant fish attacking a boat adrift on highly stylized waves (1851). The other 150 or so artists on view include Andrea Mantegna, Odilon Redon, Oskar Kokoschka, Lucian Freud and Barbara Hepworth; the show travel to Tate St Ives in autumn.

Ian Hamilton Finlay
Arnolfini, 20 July - 8 September 2013
Ian Hamilton Finlay was a polymathic presence on the post-war British art scene, producing stone sculptures, shaping his garden-as-a-work-of-art Little Sparta, writing concrete poetry and releasing small runs of small-scale publications through his company Wild Hawthorn Press.

_{Ian Hamilton Finlay, Public Sculpture Commission, St George's Bristol, 2002. Courtesy the artist and St George's Bristol.}

Bristol’s Arnolfini focuses on his interest in print from this weekend, presenting his lithographs, posters, journals and printed ephemera, all which were characterized by experimentation with typography. Contemporary artists Jason Dodge, Christian Flamm, Beatrice Gibson and Will Holder all contribute to show to acknowledge Finlay’s abiding influence on a younger generation.

_{Hamish Fulton, 'A Five Day Circular Clockwise Walk Round London', 2011. Copyright the artist. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London.} Hamish Fulton
Maureen Paley, 20 July - 25 August 2013
Another British artist who combined a passion for landscape as well as text in his practice is Hamish Fulton, the subject of an exhibition at London’s Maureen Paley from Saturday.

Since 1973, Fulton has produced pieces of photography and text – and sometimes text-on-photography – which respond to his experience of long-distance walks, acting both as documents and works in their own right.

Walking for Fulton intercedes with a wide range of different disciplines and issues, from the politics of how we treat our environments to our spiritual sustenance, and he organizes group walks in order to create social change.

Emma Hart
Camden Arts Centre, 26 July — 29 September 2013
The subtitle of Emma Hart’s solo show at Camden Arts Centre, on view from next Friday, is ‘Dirty Looks’, and it sums up well the messed-up visual world she presents to viewers with her sculptural assemblages that feature diverse elements such as ceramics, textiles, found objects (from spectacles to rear-view mirrors), photographic prints and moving image.

_{Emma Hart, Dirty Looks (work in progress) ‘Clay Napkins’ 2013. Courtesy the artist.}

The confusion of everyday life – and the way our culture, including our art works try and order or avoid it – is a central subject. Expect to have a strange and fractured experience in the gallery space.

Sam Phillips is a London-based arts journalist and contributor to RA Magazine

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