Donald Eastwood

TUESDAY

Its Turner Prize Tuesday this week, so if you have somehow managed to get here without knowing who was nominated, let me tell you: its Enrico David, Roger Hiorns, Lucy Skaer and Richard Wright. Roger 'famously lined a brutalist house in crystal sulphate' Hiorns is the big favourite: at 2 to 1 with Ladbrokes (also at Betfair with slightly better odds) it's as certain as Sea the Stars in the Arc de Triomphe. However this is the prize that defines itself on its own controversy...

In fact, in a rather controversy-dispelling move, it has begun literally defining itself on its own controversy, as described on the Tate's 'about the Turner prize' page, so we'll have to think of something more imaginative than that to say about it this year.

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday brings about one of the most exciting exhibitions of the Autumn, with original murmurART artist Laurence Owen opening his solo show 'The Golden Book' at the brilliant 20 Hoxton Square projects. This series of large-scale canvases show defaced military portraits, which will peer down from the immaculate gallery like warped propaganda judging its onlookers. The press release promises the study of Derridean contrasting semiotics to do with the military figures and the attractive visual style of the painter, and it is also known that a good deal of the work has sold already to important buyers.

THURSDAY

Firstly, Paradise Row are rolling out their Frieze show, entitled 'Play'. Fresh from popping up in the Istanbul Biennial, this time they are to pop up in the enviable surroundings of central Mayfair - between Grovesnor Square and Park Lane. Play involves both material artworks from artist's including Johanna Billing and Jake & Dinos Chapman and performance for which the gallery is so well known. The performance programme by the Wallis Gallery includes forthcoming murmurART artist Ian Giles, you can see some video recordings of the performances at their Making Mistakes nights online on the artist/curator Edward Fornieles' youtube channel here.

While on the subjects of Ian Giles and online, the artist who usually works in performance and video has created a blog under the auspices of a web logging exchange with the artist Rachel Adams (see New Sensations opposite), under the name This to follow that*, click the link to get there.

Also that night, the university of the Arts opens an admirable collection that will allow you to wistfully pine for a world without money, entitled the Shandy Show:

"The Arts Gallery is proud to present the first major gallery exhibition of works from an unorthodox and intriguing private collection. The Shandy Show reveals an eclectic set of artworks amassed by an anonymous London-based collector over the last decade; uniquely, the majority of the works were accrued through an exchange of his skilled labour for art. Opening on 9 October, The Shandy Show will feature over twenty works by artists including Sarah Lucas, Mark Titchner, Andrew Grassie and Lisa Milroy among others, specially selected with a focus on alumni of University of the Arts London."

It's at the Arts gallery on Davies Street, and University of the Arts Curator Medeia Cohan-Petrolino will discuss the pieces after the show. Info and press release is here.