Theo Jansen, Exeter
Sunseekers at the Exmouth seaside might be surprised to meet a vast mechanical creature stalking the sands this summer. Dutch artist Theo Jansen is unleashing one of his "strandbeests": giant kinetic sculptures-cum-environmentally friendly feats of engineering that resemble walking dinosaur remains or even dragon skeletons. Largely created from plastic electrical tubing and old water bottles, these self-sufficient, wind-powered creations store energy generated by their sail-like wings. They're a bit like Robinson Crusoe inventions with steampunk know-how. At 10 metres long and almost five metres high, Jansen's latest strandbeest, Ventosa Siamesis, is one of his largest to date. Building up to the sculpture's "live" outings, an exhibition of drawings and sections of earlier sculptures, which the artist describes as fossils, explores the mechanics behind these lumbering wonders.
Spacex, to 3 Jul
Skye Sherwin
Quarantine, Manchester
"When I started making The Soldier's Song I didn't know any soldiers. I watched hours of YouTube footage instead. I know a few soldiers now … I still don't know what to think, but wanted to ask the questions." So says Renny O'Shea of the Salford-based performance company Quarantine, after 18 months of interviewing currently serving soldiers from the north-west. The Soldier's Song is a walk-in karaoke booth where visitors can duet with video films of soldiers performing their karaoke favourites. The piece is typical of Quarantine's potent intermixing of theatre and real world contingency. Yes, the idea might be simple, but it also nudges aside ideas about the temperament of soldiers.
Manchester Art Gallery, to 4 Jul
Robert Clark
Unto This Last, London
Contemporary art and craft have gone on some awkward dates in recent years. Yet, as this group show informed by John Ruskin's writings shows, conceptualism and artisan values don't have to be an odd couple. While the eight artists here are rooted in a 20th-century world of pop culture and industry, curators Alice Motard and Alex Sainsbury suggest aspects of their work run back to Ruskin. Obvious links can be seen in Max Mara Art Prize-winner Andrea Büttner's religion-tinged woodcut prints or Pernille Kapper Williams's playful porcelain cups Matter Upon Matter, while interwoven images in Thomas Bayrle's prints, inspired by working in a textiles factory and mass demonstrations, display his interest in social fabric.
Raven Row, E1, Thu to 25 Jul
Skye Sherwin
Marek Tobolewski, Nottingham
Collectively titled Continuum In Symmetry, Marek Tobolewski's recent paintings and drawings present variations on taking a line for a distinctly worm-like walk. Subtle surfaces are worked and reworked to form a ground for linear improvisations that look like the rhythmic markings below the high tide line on a wet beach. Despite their apparent aesthetic gracefulness, there is something almost obsessive in these relentless organic abstractions. One cannot but wonder at the artist's patience as he works with no end in sight to these seemingly aimless graphic meanderings. It is this very slight sense of unease that establishes a kind of psychological undertow.
Djanogly Art Gallery, to 13 Jun
Robert Clark
Ged Quinn, London
With its golden sunlight and classical ruins, Ged Quinn's wall-sized painting taps into an earlier age's fantasy of rustic bliss. Indeed, the Cornish artist's clement settings are often borrowed from iconic landscape painters, yet his works are far from simple pastiche. A malevolent joker seems to have been set loose in paradise, leaving his mark in sinister quotes from movies, music, politics and art. Quinn's latest series features guest appearances by historic corruptors of pastoral ideals. With Hitler as a sweet country girl or Stalin's chief of police depicted as a goon with a black eye, cultural meltdown becomes a densely layered comedy-horror.
Wilkinson Gallery, E2, Thu to 27 Jun
Skye Sherwin
Oliver East: Berlin And That, Manchester
Berlin And That is Oliver East's graphic account of a walk from Berlin's Alexanderplatz to Frankfurt, keeping as close to the train line as possible, just for the hell of it. Each of the 52 ink and watercolour drawings created retrospectively on return to his studio were then passed on for completion to East's "friends, artists and non-artists, musicians and pro-drinkers alike". Familiar north-west art world names appear: Stuart Edmundson, Matthew Houlding, Maeve Rendle. So the wandering comic-book musings on the experiences along the way are given extra wayward narrative twists by wry interjections from members of the Manchester scene. East's work might appear light-hearted but it is always generous spirited and, at times, deeply touching in its paying precious attention to every lived moment, no matter how mundane.
The International 3, to 5 Jun
Robert Clark
Melanie Gilligan: Popular Unrest, London
Melanie Gilligan's 2008 online film, Crisis In The Credit System, was unnervingly timely. Made just before the recession hit, it tackled the world of hedge fund managers and financial analysts. The young Canadian-born artist's latest work envisions an even darker future, following the logic of capitalism to a grim, absurd conclusion. In a world governed by a system called "the spirit", mankind is reduced to physical needs: an invisible serial killer dispatches victims in public places; diet foods eat weight-watchers from the inside. It makes for a prescient fusion of cultural mores, politics and paranoia, from TV drama's fixation on violence and forensic procedure to economic decline.
Chisenhale Gallery, E3, to 20 Jun
Skye Sherwin
Maeve Rendle, Blackpool
Maeve Rendle takes the inspiration for this her first solo show from a line in Marcel Proust's reflection on the nature of memory In Search of Lost Time: "I could not help being saddened by the fact that there was now nothing left of my former frame of mind." Rendle's installation adds up to a series of intimations of absence. Nails mark the position of empty frames. Unframed photographs present fragmentary evidence of time passing. The structure of the of the overall work is continually discomposed and recomposed. This is art in a tentative state of constant self-reflection and flux. And what an admirable and adventurous show for the dear old Grundy to stage as the Blackpool tourist season truly kicks off.
The Grundy Gallery, to 5 Jun
Robert Clark