Legendary guerrilla artist Banksy has done it again. Not content with graffiti masterpieces or planting an inflatable figure of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner at Disney World, Banksy has taken over the whole of the Council-owned City Museum and Art Gallery in his native Bristol. The exhibition invades every area of the museum, and each surprising exhibit expresses Banksy's iconoclastic humour and world view. The exhibition was mounted in extreme secrecy: not even City Council Officials knew it was happening, and gallery attendants were hired through the Job Centre just the day before.

Banksy said: "This is the first show I've ever done where taxpayers' money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off."

It seems almost unbelievable to affluent Westerners, but many Zimbabweans can't buy a newspaper. The Zimbabwean is sold in the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe, but in its own country attracts an import tax that makes it unaffordable to the average Zimbabwean.

To increase international sales of the newspaper, thereby subsidising it for Zimbabweans, South African agency TBWA/Hunt Lascaris came up with this hard-hitting outdoor campaign. Billboards and posters were printed on real Zimbabwean bank notes, including the infamous Z$1trillion note. The money is worth less than the paper that would otherwise have been used in the campaign.

Thank to the CR Blog for this story.

Photographer Mark Cowper has lived in the same tower block in Battersea, South West London, for 20 years. Theoretically, every apartment in the building is the same, but as Mark's amazing project shows, this is far from the truth. He doorstepped his neighbours over the period of a year, and took photographs of their living rooms from the same angle. From the stylish to the chaotic, from faux Victoriana to Japanese-style minimalism, the spaces reflect the inhabitants' individuality. The one ubiquitous element, however, Mark says, is the abundance of technology: remote controls, DVD players and flatscreen televisions.

See the exhibition at the Geffrye Museum in East London from 7 April 2009.

Great writers, I imagine, hold worlds within their heads. But what real world do they inhabit? Photographer Eamonn McCabe photographed the rooms in which a number of great writers ply their trade. Margaret Drabble has a jigsaw and a view. Will Self has maps and a million post-its. VS Naipaul creates his monumental works in an ascetic student's study. See the exhibition at London's Madison contemporary art gallery or see the BBC's report on it here.

Enjoy this Top 50 gallery of some of the world’s most unusual architecture. Here’s a selection of buildings to skew your perspective, give you vertigo and induce gasps of wonder, nausea and/or hilarity, depending on your sensibilities.

Some of the most valuable works in his collection perished in a fire, and a battle with his landlords at County Hall forced him to shut up shop for a while, but ladies and gentlemen, über art mogul Charles Saatchi is back in business.

His brand-new gallery opened this week in the 70,000 sq. ft. Duke of York HQ building on King’s Road, Chelsea with an exhibition dedicated to new art from China.

If you’re in London, get there soon, all exhibitions are free. If you're not (shame), enjoy the comprehensive online interactive gallery, which allows you to peruse each artist’s work at your leisure.

The Times features photographer Simon Annand’s stark black-and-white images of actors in their dressing rooms.

Vanessa Redgrave, Kristin Scott Thomas, Daniel Craig and others are captured at their most vulnerable and introspective.

Ahoy, me hearties! Racquetball mates Mark Summers and John Baur came up with a hair-brained scheme to Talk Like a Pirate for a day in 1995. For many years, it was their own private holiday. Then in 2002, they emailed columnist Dave Barry, who thought it mad enough to write about, and the idea went global within days.

Now, on 19 September every year, previously normal citizens wear eye-patches and call each other scurvy dogs for a day. Around the world, some do it for the kids, some do it as a way to raise money for charity, many do it as an excuse to swig rum directly from the bottle. Will you be celebrating TLAP Day 2008? Even the scientists at the South Pole station have a bottle of grog set by! Aye aye, Cap’n!

We all know what Samuel Johnson said about London and men, and being tired of life, but it is true … there is always something extraordinary going on in this astonishing city.

Witness Illumini, an exhibition by a group of artists who all work with the medium of light. it’s innovative, it’s free, and it takes place in the creepy and rambling passages of the crypt of St Pancras Church, Euston. We loved Jane Webb’s astonishing cyber people, and Vincenzo di Maria’s Mr Plug (see image above).

London-based environmental artist Anna Garforth has created her own form of eco-vandalism by graffiti-ing this wall with lines of original poetry … using moss. Anna took inspiration from the Guerrilla Gardeners. They invade public spaces (traffic islands, wastelands and verges) at night in acts of civil disobedience … and plant pretty flowers.

She’s not the world’s only Bio-Banksy: Look at this transformed storm drain, car, and city wall.