RA Magazine's pick of this week’s art events (24–29 August)

Cork Street Open
23 - 31 August
The annual Cork Street Open Exhibition is open until the end of the month for anyone looking to purchase an artwork while helping a good cause: this year proceeds go to the homeless charity Crisis.

Luiza Menescal, 'The Dragon's Breath'. Photograph on Diebond Aluminium.

Based across the two galleries at 27 and 28 Cork Street – just behind the Royal Academy – the open-submission exhibition features a very diverse range of work, including photography as well as paintings, sculptures and drawings. Judges this year include the critic Edward Lucie Smith, a man with a good eye for talent.

Zhang Huan
Last chance: Until 26 August
Shanghai-based Zhang Huan rose to international prominence in the 1990s for performance works predicated on the artist’s endurance or transformation; in his most famous piece, 12m2 (1994), Zhang sat naked and covered in honey and fish oil in a fetid public toilet, flies feeding on his body. Recently the artist has focused on other artistic media, in particular painting and sculpture, creating representations out of ash rather than oil paint or plaster.

Zhang Huan 'The Mountain is Still a Mountain', South Galleries, White Cube Bermondsey, London 20 July - 26 August 2012. © the artist Photo: Ben Westoby Courtesy White Cube.

This weekend is the last chance to catch White Cube Bermondsey’s exhibition of his latest works on linen, which are Photorealist in style, replicating monochrome found photographs ranging from family snapshots and documents of China’s history. Applied with breathtaking precision, the ash carries associations of spirituality and death, as well representing well the grainy quality of the original photographic material.

Billy Cowie: The Revery Alone
Last chance: Until 26 August
The Wapping Project – a warehouse-style arts space in the former Wapping Hydraulic Power Station next to the Thames – consistently shows high-quality art, although it often attracts visitors as much for its fine restaurant as its exhibitions.

Billy Cowie, 'The Revery Alone', 2012.

This weekend the doors close on its installation of Billy Cowie's The Revery Alone (2008). The piece projects the moving image of dancer and choreographer Eléonore Ansari on the ceiling, an image that becomes sculptural when the viewers, who lie on floor, wear 3-D glasses.

Photo: Calvin How. One One One
Last chance: Until 26 August
Another interesting to venue to visit is Annex East, a new 1800-square-foot space in Stratford that comes complete with a cocktail bar as well as a restaurant.

The doors are closing at the end of the weekend on its first exhibition, a group show produced in collaboration with a selection of up-and-coming London contemporary art galleries.

Each gallery spotlights one of their artists, and participants include painter Neil Rumming, who has recently brought collage and relief elements into his canvases, and the sculptor James Balmforth, who works with a wide variety of forms and materials, the constant being the artist’s deadpan wit.

Gravity and Disgrace
Last chance: Until 25 August
British artist Rachel Howard, known for her seductive, sometimes-anguished, works in heavy gloss paint, curates the current exhibition at London gallery Blain Southern.

Installation view of 'Gravity and Disgrace'. Courtesy of the artists and Blain|Southern.

The works in this small show incorporate unconventional materials and processes; in a piece by Jane Simpson, ice has continued to expand on a sewing machine throughout the exhibition, while an installation by Amelia Newton Whitelaw uses an elaborate pulley system involving a rock, branch and a net of salt dough.

• Royal Academy of Arts