Who or what is Jean-Marc Bustamante? This, surely, is the question we are supposed to ask of this artist of the affectless, who has skated in his three-decade-long career across the genres – first photography, then Minimalist sculpture, then a merger of the two, and for the last few years these shockingly vivid “paintings” (I use the scare quotes intentionally) on Plexiglass.

I will confess, the emotion which engulfed me when watching three films from Nathaniel Mellors’s Ourhouse series was not (initially) admiration but aggravation. The temporary plyboard cinemas of the ICA show episodes one, two and four of this pseudo-drama about the bohemian Maddox-Wilson family in their country house, whose communications start to go terribly wrong after a betracksuited man called The Object turns up, and with every passing minute I grew more frustrated even as I laughed.

The latest exhibition from Beirut-born, sometime Turner Prize-nominee Mona Hatoum – best known for sending a camera through her inner tubes and projecting the results – explores themes of displacement and geographical and political tension. I know this because since I signed up to review it a fortnight ago, invites and reminders concerning this exhibition "exploring themes of displacement and geographical and political tension" have been hitting my mailbox with hectoring insistence.

Mahler, Mahler and anyone who even remotely knew Mahler. There is, of course, more to the South Bank's 2011 season listings than this but the great symphonic agoniser (and his many chums) forms the bedrock of the classical programming as we all go wild for the centenary of his death this year. In contemporary music big names such as Rumer, Elaine Paige and Brian Wilson will pack them in, while newcomers like Josh T Pearson and Melissa Laveaux have first Southbank exposure. The London International Mime Festival in January leads off dance and performance, which has a child-friendly look this year. But watch out for the digital-electronic Rites, fascinating last time round and now welcome back for a second experience.

Gabriel Orozco has been something of an art-world secret, for some mysterious reason. He has been fêted at the Venice Biennale, he showed at the prestigious Documenta in Kassel, had a blazing Serpentine show, an Artangel commission and been flavour of the month for more than a decade to those who follow contemporary art. But to the general public? Nada, nothing, zip. And God knows why, for, as this fine Tate retrospective shows, Gabriel Orozco is the real McCoy; a dazzling creator, a serious thinker, a joyous, liberating mind and a pair of eyes that helps us see new. On top of that, as an artist he has charm to burn. For heaven’s sake, what’s not to like?

Gabriel Orozco has been something of an art-world secret, for some mysterious reason. He has been fêted at the Venice Biennale, he showed at the prestigious Documenta in Kassel, had a blazing Serpentine show, an Artangel commission and been flavour of the month for more than a decade to those who follow contemporary art. But to the general public? Nada, nothing, zip. And God knows why, for, as this fine Tate retrospective shows, Gabriel Orozco is the real McCoy; a dazzling creator, a serious thinker, a joyous, liberating mind and a pair of eyes that helps us see new. On top of that, as an artist he has charm to burn. For heaven’s sake, what’s not to like?

One of the best things about a Cindy Sherman show is you never know what you’re going to get. And in this exhibition, of a new series of "Untitled" images, what you get is very surprising indeed. Sherman's photographs are not about her, but they are always her. Sherman has always used herself – or "herself", a manipulated, redacted representation – as the canvas on which she works. This time, however, the canvas itself has changed.

A well-groomed, middle-aged woman walks into view and lights a cigarette. She stands, she smokes, the camera gives us a steady close-up of her face. As she appears to reminisce, her face subtly registers a range of emotions. Is she agitated, sad, irritated? She takes long drags of her cigarette. The film ends and she walks out of view. A second film begins. Same woman, same duration. A cigarette is smoked, the camera lingers on her face. She’s lost in recollection, but wait, there are subtle changes. A different backdrop.

In National Anthem, the debut play by bestselling novelist Colin Bateman, a composer lies prostrate on the floor. Half hungover, half waiting for inspiration, he has been commissioned to co-write an anthem for Northern Ireland with a poet and has a day to do it before flying back to his continental tax haven. The ad-hoc alliance soon fractures as differences emerge. One is Catholic, passionate and pretentious, one has sold his Protestant soul to MOR rock and platinum sales. Can the two sides work in harmony?

Camera-less photography isn’t, as some might think, a 20th-century invention, discovered by experimental Modernists such as Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. Thomas Wedgwood, before the invention of the camera and at the very beginning of the 19th century, made paintings on glass and placed these in contact with pieces of paper and leather which had been rendered light sensitive with chemical treatments. Where the painted areas blocked the light, the image left its trace. Unfortunately, since Wedgwood lacked knowledge of how to fix the images, the results vanished almost as soon as they appeared.