Exhibition of the week
A New Power: Photography and Britain 1800-1850
The very first British photographs and their social and political impacts are exposed to scrutiny.
Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1 February to 7 May
Also showing
Günther Förg
Late works by this German painter, who died in 2013, revel in the textures, colours and musical spacings of free brush marks.
Hauser and Wirth, London, 1 February to 29 April
Alberta Whittle
Bath’s history as a city that flourished in the age of slavery comes under a critical but redemptive eye.
Holburne Museum, Bath, until 8 May
Mohammed Sami
Mohammed Sami, One Thousand and One Nights, 2022. Mixed media on linen, 286 x 557 cm. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist, Modern Art London and Luhring Augustine New York
Paintings that are shadowed by Iraq’s history and the experience of exile.
Camden Art Centre until 28 May
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Extended run for this veteran sculptor and poet based in Paris.
Serpentine North, London, until 10 April
Image of the week
Jenkin van Zyl, Surrender at Edel Assanti gallery, London. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
Jenkin van Zyl makes films filled with gore, monsters and bizarre fetishes and looks like Mr Tumnus at a techno club. Could this prosthetics-wearing, jockstrap-clad raver be the UK’s most exciting new artist? Read the full story here.
What we learned
French artist Christophe Guinet has been turning trainers into sculptures
Unseen photos by Paul McCartney taken at the height of Beatlemania are going on show
Glasgow School of Art’s historic Mackintosh building, burned down in 2018, will not reopen until 2030
John Akomfrah will represent the UK at the 2024 Venice Biennale
A 1982 political artwork of Jenny Holzer’s remains all too topical
Spanish masterpieces are on loan to the UK – via New York – for an unmissable show
A Herculaneum fresco is among the looted relics returned to Italy from the US
The Royal Academy of Arts is to host an auction of donated works to help save the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine
The quilters from a tiny Alabama hamlet have had an enduring influence</…….