Damien Hirst’s death obsession and intimate visions of Amazon life – the week in art

Exhibition of the week

Damien Hirst: Relics and Fly Paintings
The latest exhibition in Hirst’s year-long occupation of this space sees him at his most macabre and death-obsessed, from black paintings made with dead flies to a flayed statue of Saint Bartholomew.
Gagosian Britannia Street, London, until end of 2021.

Also showing

Jimmy Robert: Tobacco Flower
Guadaloupe-born French artist Robert examines the history of the Caribbean through the Hunterian’s rich collections.
Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, until 5 September.

Claudia Andujar
An intimate vision of indigenous Amazon life by this Swiss-born Brazilian photographer and campaigner.
The Curve, Barbican, London, from 17 June until 29 August.

Leilah Babirye
Paintings and ceramics that deal with the artist’s experience of fleeing Uganda because of its anti-gay politics and finding a new community in New York.
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, until 31 July.

Joe Tilson
Conceptual paintings from the 1970s with a laid-back rustic vibe as the artist gave up on plastic fantastic Pop.
Marlborough, London, from 17 June until 31 July.

Image of the week

Members of the public visit the Mount Recyclemore sculpture in St Ives, Cornwall. Photograph: Jon Rowley/EPA

Mount Recyclemore, a sculpture made of discarded electronic waste depicting the faces of the G7 leaders, appeared at Sandy Acres beach, just along the coast from Carbis Bay, where the leaders are meeting. About 15 artists helped create the structure over a frantic six weeks at Joe Rush’s scrapyard/studio in south London. Parts were then transported to Cornwall on lorries and put together in situ. It will remain on the beach until Sunday, after which the plan is to set it up at tech business musicMagpie’s headquarters in Stockport, Greater Manchester. Read more here.

What we learned

Anish Kapoor thinks Modi’s bulldozing of India’s parliament buildings is a vanity-fuelled campaign to de-Islamify India

G7 leaders were depicted in Mount Recyclemore, an art installation created from 20,000 pieces of discarded tech

Elusive street artist JR reflected on the fascinating journey that has led him to global fame

London’s bars, cafes, bookshops and hair salons inspired this year’s Serpentine Pavilion

Meiro Koizumi seared Japanese atrocities in China in the memory with an unflinching work for Artes Mundi 9

A ghostly outline uncovered the secret of Modigliani’s lost lover …

… while six portraits commissioned by English Heritage revealed hidden histories of the African diaspora in England

Lost gloves took Nick Cave on a photographic journey

Liam Curtin asked Blackpool council to demolish his seafront sculpture over safety fears

Claudia Andujar created magical images with Brazil’s Yanomami tribe

Terry Farrell is out to transform city planning with an “urban room” in Newcastle

A Keith Haring mural in a Barcelona building slated for demolition will be saved …

… while an exhibition of Raphael tapestries in Madrid had some unexpected feathered visitors

A new film paints a fascinating picture of the story behind Van Gogh’s sunflowers

John Topham captured England at war, work and play from the 1920s to the second world war

Tove Jansson’s love of nature shaped the world of the Moomins

Lofty comments on sustainability at London’s Design Biennale were offset by the Kingston Cycle Hub’s more practical step

Polly Braden zoomed in on the unique joys and frustrations of single parents

Bright colours and geometric buildings make sunlit Santa Fe an eye-catching subject …

… while Will Eades stormy photography is just as spectacular

London’s Victorian drinking fountains are in the midst of a restoration battle

Ernest Withers took viewers to the record stores, picket lines and proms of the American south during the 1940s, 50s and 60s …

… though he was later revealed to be an informant for the FBI

Australian artists are taking risks in their depictions of Black tenderness

Mural painter Colin Failes died aged 73

Masterpiece of the week

The Deposition by Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece — Photograph: The National Gallery, London

Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece, The Deposition, c1500-1505
This deliberately shocking northern Renaissance painting, probably made for praying in private rather than being installed in a church, wants to make you feel the horror of Christ’s fate. His grey broken body is not beautified. It is a brutal image of unadulterated death. Soon decay will set in. Already the flesh is bloodless and emaciated. You are urged to feel the same compassion for this tortured and judicially murdered man as his mourners in the picture. And it works, whatever your beliefs or lack thereof. This kind of harrowing religious art seems to us very north European but Italian artists were already imitating and reinventing the gothic agonies we see here – most powerfully, Michelangelo in his Pieta.
National Gallery, London.