Exhibition round-up

At Tate Britain today I saw Fiona Banner's Duveen Commission where she has placed recently decommissioned fighter planes in the incongruous setting of the Duveen Galleries. The suspended Sea Harrier transforms machine into captive bird, the markings tattooing its surface evoking its namesake the Harrier Hawk. A Jaguar lies belly up on the floor, its posture suggestive of a submissive animal. Stripped and polished, its surface functions as a shifting mirror, exposing the audience to its own reactions. Harrier and Jaguar remain ambiguous objects implying both captured beast and fallen trophy.

Rachel Whiteread's collages and drawings provide a fascinating and intimate insight into the creative process behind her work. While her sculptures are often large-scale and involve a team of fabricators, these paper works provide a more personal, mobile counterpoint. Nevertheless, they also share many of the themes familiar from her public commissions: texture and surface; void and presence; and the subtle observation of human traces in everyday life.

To enter Mike Nelson's The Coral Reef is to enter a parallel world. Rooms, doors, passageways, all bear traces of habitation and decay. Different, often conflicting, ideologies or belief systems are presented through these traces. The implied occupants of Nelson's world appear to be detached from the political and economic centre, left to exist at the margins of globalised, capitalist society. The work's title alludes to this collection of complex, fragile belief systems that form an obscured layer - a coral reef - beneath the 'ocean surface' of prevailing orthodoxies. Nelson's absent protagonists occupy positions of resistance in the face of dominant ideologies. However, Nelson perhaps conveys a sense of inevitable futility about such resistance. In his words, he wants the spectator to feel 'lost in a world of lost people'.

Using vintage Coca-cola and Pepsi advertising signs as his canvas, Pakpoom Silaphan creates portraits of influential people using collage and illustration with marker pen and emulsion. High-profile figures including John Lennon, Che Guevera and The Queen populate the signs at the Scream Gallery, making a clear connection between icons and the advertising industry. Silaphan takes Warhol's elevation of everyday brands to high art, and combines it with his adoration of famous figures. The power of advertising and corporate branding is demonstrated by the infiltration of Coca-Cola, Pepsi etc. to countries outside Western culture. "Celebrity is really just a word. The people who not only find fame, but also learn the power of influence, and in doing so, make a huge impact on our culture - these are the icons to me." Pakpoom Silaphan, July 2010

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Robert Plant - Angel Dance.