Shall we agree to agree that art’s pretty lightweight when all’s said and done? That it’s jokey fluff and flummery for the most part? Life’s certainly a fun house over at the Turner Prize this year.

'When I put Mark Wallinger and Bob & Roberta Smith on a pair of elephants'

“You learn to know where people want to go even if they don’t know themselves,” one tube employee at Bank station told me, as I wandered around the labyrinth of tunnels, escalators, and platforms in search of Mark Wallinger’s own Labyrinth – artwork number 142 out of 270.

Anyone who remembers their first visit to London will know that the Tube can be something of a maze to the uninitiated.

Central banks should be prepared to break the ultimate monetary taboo and directly finance government's deficits, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, Lord Turner, suggested in a speech last night.

What a shame it is that the Turner Prize was not, in the end, awarded to the man who paints with excrement or the woman who lives in a nudist colony and changed her name to Spartacus so as to "remind people they have a choice in life". Instead, the winner of the prestigious modern art prize was Elizabeth Price, whose trilogy of video installations draws from film and photographic archives and historic artefacts to generate fantasy episodes.

'I feel evicted – both from my studio and from my medium'

Phil Collins was working in Jessops and studying for his MFA when he came upon the idea of turning customers' photos into art. These common-place images - of people getting married or getting drunk - possessed an unguarded intimacy, at once posed and trusting.

'I thought people would say, "This isn't art!" But they are receptive to my ideas'

A West End shop owner is calling on London Mayor Boris Johnson to visit her shop in an attempt to boost Soho's "disastrous" Olympic trade.   

The National Portrait Gallery has unveiled its largest commission to date, the culmination of three years’ work, dedicated to the “spirit of greatness” of those involved in the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

A classically-inspired peep show has been set up in the middle of the National Gallery.

Is ballet a sport? Of course it’s not, in the competitive sense, although the physicality and athleticism on the bill for Dance GB, a three-way collaboration between Scottish Ballet, National Dance Company Wales and English National Ballet to celebrate the forthcoming Olympics, would surely impress any national selectors.