Critic's choice: top 5 exhibitions

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Foggy outlook: Gormley's installation is one of London's top draws

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Antony Gormley's fog in a box, a collaboration between Dali and Disney plus the last chance to see Monet's pastels are some of London's top exhibition draws.

Antony Gormley: Blind Light
Hayward Gallery, SE1
Step inside Blind Light and you'll find yourself lost in a labyrinthine pea-souper, from which fellow gallery-goers occasionally loom up, alarmingly close. It's all about hiding the body, but elsewhere, the familiar form of Antony Gormley himself is central. In Space Station, he creates a crouching, supersize version of himself in foetal position from steel boxes, and in Capacitator, his form bristles in steel rods. Meanwhile, more than 30 nude casts of the artist loiter precariously around the Hayward Gallery's exterior - grey, metallic body-doubles who together make up Event Horizon. An ambitious exhibition that hints promisingly at new directions. (0870 3800 4000). Until 19 August.

Dali & Film
Tate Modern, SE1 As artistic partnerships go, the collaboration between surrealist supremo Salvador Dali and Walt Disney is certainly eyebrow-raising. In fact, it was just one of several filmic encounters that Dali enjoyed throughout his long lifetime. As this zany exhibition reveals, cinema was central to his work, providing both a source of inspiration and an outlet for experimentation. He saw Hollywood's vivid populism as an antidote to lofty, highculture pretension, and was particularly taken with slapstick comedians Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. He formed other, less surprising collaborations with the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and the Marx Brothers, and some of his earliest forays into film were with his countryman, Luis Bunuel. More than 100 drawings, photographs and films document Dali's celluloid passion, along with some important paintings. (020 7887 8888). Tomorrow until 9 September.

How We Are Now
Tate Britain, SW1
The awesome scope of How We Are Now more than makes up for the fact that it's Tate Britain's first major photography exhibition. Journeying through 150 years of the medium's history, from its pioneering beginnings to its hi-tech, latter-day embodiment, curators have assembled a vast haul of works by names known, unknown and long ago lost. Along with images by the likes of Lewis Carroll, Bill Brandt and Martin Parr, you'll also find anonymous postcards, family snaps and medical photographs. It all adds up to a rich history of both British photography and Britain itself: leave time for a long visit. (020 7887 8008). Until 2 September.

LAST CHANCE: The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings
Royal Academy, W1
Claude Monet's paintings weren't quite the spontaneous creations you'd expect from the founder of Impressionism. As this surprising exhibition reveals, he was a thoughtful draughtsman. Curators have trawled collections public and private in search of his works on paper, surfacing with a haul that spans his early landscape studies, his luminous Views of the Thames series, and the drawings he made of his own paintings for reproduction in journals. When he switches from pencil and chalk to pastels, something glorious happens, and the light and colour and liquid movement for which he's so loved flood the paper. (020 7300 8000). Until 10 June.

LAST CHANCE: A Slap in the Face! Futurists in Russia
Estorick Collection, N1
East meets West in this sparky look at the relationship between Italian and Russian Futurism. Futurism's Italian founder, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, hoped personally to lead the movement across Europe. The Russian Futurists, who included poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov, were a fiercely independent lot, however, and differed from the Italian Futurists in several key respects. Though fascinated by all things urban and mechanical, they retained a keen interest in folk art and rural themes, resulting in such seemingly contradictory concepts as the Futurist peasant. The exhibition takes its title from their manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, which was bound in sackcloth.
(020 7704 9522). Until 10 June.

 

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