Exhibition of the week: ROPE BURN: Painting Behind the Velveteen Curtain 

Taking its title from a Janet Jackson song, this group show is a spot on take on the relationship between younger contemporary artists and consumer culture. Highlights include slick ultra reflective surface digital ‘paintings’ by Parker Ito, Roman Liška’s cracked neon reworked readymades and Alex Da Corte brilliantly brash fusion of shop display techniques and painting. Come prepared for a good dose of visual seduction.

Private view Friday July 11 6-9pm. Exhibition runs until Aug 17.

Event of the week: Have A Nice Day Live Performance

Create London has teamed up with Hannah Perry, curator Attilia Fattori Franchini and bubblebyte.org for a video/digital/audio performance event at the Barbican. The project got teenagers from south-east London together with local artists like Yuri Pattison and Jesse Darling, who together examined their relationship to technology. How this is going to come together in the event has to be experience but will combine live feed and audio with a green screen video installation.

Saturday July 14, Create London

Online artwork of the week: Funk Lessons (1983) by Adrien Piper

This may be the best 15 minute video work you will ever see – and it is currently online at ubuweb. Semi-documentary, semi-performance work – the video records the seminal conceptual artist Piper teaching a group of volunteers at a California university to dance to funk. The soundtrack is incredible, the dance steps addictive and the subtitled text onscreen like ‘White People Can Dance’ is sheer genius. This is video art at its utopian, inspiring, physical best.

Art Publication of the week: William E Jones ‘Imitation of Christ’

William E Jones is one of the most interesting artists working with found footage and experimental video today. This book, published to coincide with a show currently on at the Hammer Museum in LA, is based on the museum’s collection. The crux is the relationship between images of revolution and religion, from Contemporary Latin American art to Baroque prints. You may never look at Christ in the same away again after reading this.

Published by MACK books

Artist of the week: Jack Newling

There is something hypnotic about the repetitive geometric minimalism in Jack Newling’s abstract paintings. The Nottingham native has a bunch of shows about to open. This week he is part of two person show 'Reverse Repeat' at hot space Rowing, alongside Richard Healy. Midway through the show the pair are swapping and reworking their projects for the opposite space. He’s also in an emerging artist group show at MOT opening July 18. This is definitely Newling’s month.