Critic's choice: top five exhibitions

David Thorpe: The Defeated Life Restored
Camden Arts Centre, NW1
This specially commissioned installation is a remarkably intricate work. Using tall wooden screens with panes of sap green, deep turquoise and murky brown glass, David Thorpe has created a bizarre self-contained environment. Here you find an exotic group of sculptures, geometric structures topped with giant stars, mosaicked with hand-cast tiles. They look like fantastical architectural models from some futuristic society. As a whole, the piece is meant to suggest echoes of the Arts and Crafts movement and its Utopian ideals of self-sufficiency. (020 7472 5500). Until 1 July.

Paul Chan: The 7 Lights
Serpentine Gallery, W8
Innovative American artist Paul Chan has made his name with lo-fi video art and digital animations, blending art history and pop culture references to create frequently dystopian narratives. His latest series, premiered here, evokes the seven days of creation. It's made up of drawings and large-scale digital projections, and fuses notions of the sacred and profane with a hauntingly poetic aesthetic. Cast onto floors and walls or glimmering mysteriously in corners, these animated projections seem almost like natural occurrences - the result of light and shadows falling through a window, perhaps. (020 7402 6075). Until 1 July.

New York Fashion Now
V&A, SW7
A fresh generation of New York fashion designers steps into the limelight in this zesty exhibition. It features around 60 outfits, the work of 20 fashionistas who have all launched independent labels between 1999 and 2004. Zac Posen and Derek Lam are among the better known, with up-and-coming names such as Daniel Silver and Steven Cox of Duckie Brown also represented. The clothes themselves range from glitzy frocks to sporty daywear that's almost as glam, along with new interpretations of old favourites and avantgarde collections by designers who favour miniature wind-up hula dolls over runway clothes horses. Together, their start-up stories offer plenty to inspire London's young hopefuls. (020 7942 2000). Until 2 September.

Surreal Things
V&A, SW7
Visual art "-isms" often spill over into other art forms, but surrealism has had a unique impact on design. This sleekly produced exhibition traces its influence on fashion and architecture, advertising and interior design, and though you'll find paintings by Magritte, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali, it's the objects themselves that are its focus. They take their cues from dreamscapes and subconscious fears and desires. There's a larky joyfulness to Salvador Dali's Lobster Telephone, for instance, while darker, fetishistic notes creep in via other exhibits - pieces such as Elsa Schiaparelli's "Tear" Evening Dress, with its decorative motif of torn flesh. (020 7942 2000). Until 22 July.

World: England's First View of America
British Museum, WC1
Though daintily executed, the watercolours of gentleman artist John White have mainly their subject matter to recommend them. In the 1580s, he crossed the Atlantic on some of the first English voyages to the New World, where he set about capturing all that they encountered, from the North Carolina Algonquin Indians to local flora and fauna. Not only do his paintings and sketches preserve our first glimpse of America, but they are also the sole surviving visual record of this particular period of American history. Having been hidden away in the British Museum's vaults for the past 40 years, they're now on show alongside assorted objects from the Elizabethan expeditions. (020 7323 8000). Until 17 June.