Using recycled materials and even metal left behind by Israeli rockets, artists continue to endure in the tiny coastal enclave

Grey rubble dust has settled on almost everything around a destroyed house in Deir al-Balah, a town in the centre of the occupied Gaza Strip, but on some shrapnel-pocked walls, the paint is still fresh and vibrant.

Graffiti artists have used the building as a canvas after Israel’s five-day Operation Shield and Arrow in May, a surprise offensive that left 33 Palestinians and two people in Israel dead. On one wall, a child waving a Palestinian flag is depicted with wings, standing amid the clouds. In a destroyed bedroom, a young girl brushing her hair has been painted behind a ruined dressing table, her face peering out from where the mirror used to be.

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The experimental musician and producer on a mind-blowing Guatemalan cellist, the joys of ‘smear frames’ in old-school animated films and his favourite brand of vegan caviar

Born in Massachusetts to Russian-Jewish parents, Daniel Lopatin, 41, is an experimental musician and producer who has been working under the pseudonym Oneohtrix Point Never since the mid-00s. Now based in Brooklyn, he has produced for artists such as the Weeknd, FKA twigs , David Byrne and Anohni, notably her Mercury-nominated 2016 album Hopelessness . Lopatin also composes for film, including original scores for Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems and Good Time , for which he received the best soundtrack award at the 2017 Cannes film festival. Oneohtrix Point Never’s 10th studio album, Again , is out now on Warp.

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Whether it’s the city’s annual showcase of cinema or a TV lockdown political satire, our critics have you covered for the next seven days

BFI London Film Festival
Various venues, London, 4 to 15 October
Opening with the international premiere of Saltburn (starring Barry Keoghan, Rosamund Pike, Richard E Grant and Carey Mulligan), London’s annual showcase of cinema blends a mixture of big hits from this year’s Cannes and Venice film festivals with lesser-known premieres of gems such as Naqqash Khalid’s excellent In Camera.

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The artist’s Royal Academy retrospective revives her 1977 live work in which visitors pass through a naked couple in a doorway – and reveal something of themselves

In 1977, in a gallery in Bologna, the artist Marina Abramović and her lover and collaborator, Ulay, stood naked in a narrow doorway, staring intently at one another, as the public squeezed between them.

Last week Imponderabilia, as the piece is called, was resurrected with 37 “re-performers” for the artist’s blockbuster retrospective at the Royal Academy in London.

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Exhibition honours French impressionist whose landscapes have helped island create jobs and forge global ties

The island of Guernsey may be best known as a tax haven for the super-wealthy, a pleasant holiday destination and for the rich milk its docile cows produce.

But thanks to a brief sojourn by Pierre-Auguste Renoir 140 years ago, and the bold thinking of culture lovers on the island, it is becoming a draw for art fans.

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Philip Guston paints an unhinged States, Claudette Johnson’s haunting drawings get a big show and a magical light is shone on the 18th century – all in your weekly dispatch

Philip Guston
Cartoon Klansmen smoke and stare in Guston’s grotesque satires on American madness.
• Tate Modern, London, 5 October-25 February

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Queer Nature celebrates the astonishing diversity of plants – and looks at how they have inspired LGBTQ+ groups. Our writer enters a world of bisexual flowers and asexual trees

The Ruizia mauritiana is a large green shrub with cascading leaves shaped like lovehearts. There’s one just off the main walkway through the magnificent Temperate House in London’s Kew Gardens, a Victorian marvel nearly 200 metres long. Among all the surrounding greenery, the plant looks unassuming – but examples of this specimen are extremely rare. In fact, by the mid-1990s, it was thought to be extinct in the wild. But then came some thrilling news: a 10-metre tall example had been spotted in the Mauritian highlands. And soon Kew’s scientists were wading through a guava thicket in the east African island nation to take some cuttings.

Those scientists would go on to make a remarkable discovery. Previously, the Ruizia mauritiana was thought only to grow male flowers (whose stamen produce pollen). But, during its cultivation, researchers realised that this wasn’t the case: the sex of this plant’s flowers depends on the temperature. In hot conditions, it grows male flowers. But in cooler climates, it produces female ones (whose stigmata receive pollen).

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In the once war-torn suburb of Medellín, murals draw thousands of tourists a day. Now a group of female artists is challenging the male grip on street art, one wall at a time

A drug-smuggling route runs straight through the Comuna 13 neighbourhood on the outskirts of Medellín, which was once one of the most dangerous places in Colombia. Over the past decade it has been transformed, and is now better known for its colourful murals than for gang warfare.

Graffiti tours of the neighbourhood now attract 20,000 tourists every day. With them comes a renewed sense of purpose for those growing up in the aftermath of Colombia’s civil conflict. But the gains from graffiti tourism have benefited some more than others: almost all of the artists are men.

The Comuna 13 neighbourhood on the outskirts of Medellín has become a tourist hotspot because of the murals and hip-hop culture

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Exclusive: Sir John Leighton says galleries still need to broaden audience beyond Edinburgh middle classes and tourists

Scotland’s national galleries, which house some of the country’s greatest works of art, need to do far more to make themselves accessible and inclusive, their outgoing director general has said.

Sir John Leighton, who is retiring in February after 17 years as head of the National Galleries in Scotland (NGS), said the organisation “still has a long way to go” to broaden the audience beyond Edinburgh’s middle classes and tourists.

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