Fresh art on the scene

New in the art world this week: walk through landscapes of paradise at The National Gallery, step back into the Renaissance in Westbourne Grove and check out the differences between the Bohemian artist and the workaholic in The Tortoise and The Hare at the Ben Uri Gallery.

Paradise

Whether it's an Edenic, pastoral landscape or a more exuberant, Bacchic kind of a place, nearly every culture has myths of an idyll lost or longed for. Through 21 works, this heady exhibition explores the ways in which artists have used the world around them to create their own images of paradise.

Religious imagery abounds in Benozzo Gozzoli's heavenly garden, while classical descriptions of Arcadia influence Poussin's joyously choreographed nymphs and satyrs, and Constable's 'The Cornfield' evokes a quintessentially English Golden Age.

Paradise has myriad secular meanings, too, and works by Gauguin, Monet and Mark Rothko all look beyond the Christian and the classical to conjure up more earthly visions.

Sartorial: Conceptual Clothing, Art And Fashion

From the sculptural, barely-there togas that clad ancient marble statues to the crisp swathes of fabric so beloved of Renaissance painters, things sartorial have long entranced the artist.

This varied exhibition comes with a conceptual lining and includes photographs by Bobby Baker, abstract text works by Chris Kenny and beaded, free-standing sculptures by Liliane Lijn.

Adrian Bannon's ethereal 'Thistledown Coat' is among several key works, orbited here by younger, up-and-coming names such as Seraphina Samet, whose paper jacket is a fragile carapace woven from glossy men's magazines.

The Tortoise And The Hare: An Exhibition Of Works By William Roberts And Jacob Kramer

This is the third exhibition in Ben Uri's Whitechapel Boys series, and follows on from successful surveys of Bernard Meninsky and Mark Gertler. Although born just three years apart, Roberts and Kramer could not have been more different in their approach to their work.

The tortoise is Roberts, whose daily routine revolved entirely around his work (he was painting on the day he died) while Kramer, the hare, led a far more bohemian existence. The key connection was Sarah, Kramer's sister and early model, who subsequently married Roberts and became his muse.

Lisson Gallery

Conceptual artists often seem to be a chilly bunch. Not so, insists this new exhibition that spreads through both of the Lisson Gallery's spaces. Contributing artists include Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham and Marine Hugonnier, but in each piece the cold, intellectual strategies of conceptual art are hauled into the service of the emotional, the mysterious and the poetic. Luring the viewer in to a limbo-land between the known and the felt, these mixed-media works tap into feelings of solitude and alienation, revelling in the blissfully illogical.

And well worth a look:

Crafts Council, 44A Pentonville Road, N1 (020-7278 7700). Tue-Sat 11am-6pm, Sun 2pm-6pm, free.