RA Magazine's pick of this week’s art events (26 Apr-2 May)

_{Fiona Rae RA, ‘Side by side, I'll be yours forever’, 2011. Oil, acrylic and gouache on canvas. 72 x 59 in. /182.9 x 149.9 cm. T008122. © Fiona Rae; Courtesy, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London.} Fiona Rae RA
Towner Gallery, 27 April - 23 June 2013
Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy Schools, Fiona Rae has a post-digital perspective on the medium, bringing together disparate elements on the canvas like a computer artworker collaging images in Photoshop.

Clip art, Japanese animation, Abstract Expressionism and Northern Renaissance printmaking are just a few of her sources, and the results are vibrant, visually challenging works of art that hover between a variety of different painterly modes.

From Saturday a two-month long survey of her practice is on view at Eastbourne’s Towner Gallery.

_{Gavin Turk, 'Triple Pop Black and White', 2011. Silkscreen ink on canvas. 210 x 160 cm. © Gavin Turk, 2013. Courtesy of Ben Brown Fine Arts.} Gavin Turk
Ben Brown Fine Arts, until 14 June 2013
It’s been 20 years since Gavin Turk made his most iconic work, Pop (1993), in which a waxwork of the British artist assumes the pose of Elvis Presley but in the guise of Sid Vicious. The work was subsequently acquired by Charles Saatchi and exhibited in the Royal Academy’s YBA-era defining show ‘Sensation’.

Two decades later Ben Brown Fine Arts in the West End presents a solo exhibition of works from across Turk’s career, including Turk’s signature in broken egg shells (1997), tromp l’oeil objects like a cast bronze sculpture produced to look like rubble (2008), and recent works inspired by Arte Povera pioneer Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Paul Pfeiffer
Thomas Dane, until 25 May 2013
Honolulu-born artist Paul Pfeiffer is perhaps most famous for his series of video works that amend frames and edit sequences from American basketball matches, realigning our perceptions of the subjects in front of us. In Fragment of a Crucifixion (after Francis Bacon), 1999, a loop of basketball player Larry Johnson is shown as he celebrates a slam-dunk, except the ball, the backboard and other players have been edited out: the sportsman is trapped in film like one of Bacon’s tortured souls on canvas, his rictus appearing as one of pain.

_{Paul Pfeiffer, 'Queen Cell', 2013. Film still. Courtesy Paul Pfeiffer and Thomas Dane Gallery, London.}

A new exhibition of Pfeiffer’s works at Mayfair’s Thomas Dane Gallery goes on view this Friday. It features two video installations, including Queen Cell (2013), a week-long HD work that in real time that represents a bee’s transition from lava to adult animal, as well a series of photographs and – in a return to the iconography of sport – a tricksy sculpture of a stadium.

Oreet Ahery’s Party for Freedom
Various London venues, 1 May – 22 June 2013
Enlightened commissioning agency Artangel is working on a project, Party for Freedom, with London-based artist Oreet Ahery that launches at the city’s Millbank Tower this Wednesday.

_{Oreet Ashery, 'Party for Freedom', 2013. An Artangel commission.}

Exploring ideas of political and social freedom, the work manifests itself as a moving-image work, musical soundtrack, a series of public pre-programmed events and, intriguingly, a travelling nudist troupe who can be hired to perform during May and June by members of the public.

_{William Scott, 'Red Figure', 1954. Oil on canvas. © 2013 the Estate of William Scott.} William Scott
Jerwood Gallery, 27 April - 10 July
Another notable art exhibition this weekend on the South coast is the William Scott show at Hastings’ Jerwood Gallery, one of several celebrations of the centenary of the much-loved English artist’s birth. For more discussion of Scott, read Sarah Whitfield’s piece here, published in the Spring 2013 issue of RA Magazine.

Open studios at ACME
26 - 28 April 2013
Plus a brief mention of an event that took the editorial team’s fancy for this week. It’s always a pleasure to poke one’s nose around an artist studio, isn’t it? Painter Anthony Whishaw RA and a diverse group of artists at Bethnal Green’s ACME Robinson Road Studios are presenting work in their studios this weekend, from Friday to Sunday. More information here.

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

• Royal Academy of Arts