There are certain moments created by artists where it becomes apparent that they have completed a period and are ready to shift up a gear; challenging themselves, challenging audiences and challenging the body of work that they have already produced. Filmmaker Max Hattler produced in 2010 a piece called Spin. This Busby Berkeley-style dance routine played out by plastic toy soldiers seemed to instigate a slight change in working practice, and he presents his latest work, open now, at Tenderpixel.

This new installation of three moving image works is entitled (appropriately enough) SHIFT. Commissioned between Animate Projects and Channel 4, the work is the latest in a series of co-productions between the two organisations, in a strand called Random Acts, bringing the work of film and video artists to terrestrial broadcast television.

SHIFT is a very strong work. The three minute animation exhibits influences as disparate as modernist abstraction to industrialisation and German Expressionism. The effect is jarring, and in the Tenderpixel basement a fitting mausoleum for sci-fi exploits played out under factory-esque, conveyor-belt conditions. Hattler's work has always been exuberant and anticipatory; SHIFT presents an abstract apocalypse, hearkening back to the fears of the modern age.  It's beautiful, and it's scary, and it's utterly engrossing.

Max Hattler: SHIFT is at Tenderpixel until 28 April.

Those old maids of contemporary art in the UK, Gilbert & George, create work as exciting as their adopted city, whilst remaining reassuringly traditional. Their latest show, which unfolds across all three White Cube spaces - in Hoxton, at Mason's Yard in the West End, and at the new south galleries in Bermondsey - (a first for the gallery), is called London Pictures, and is a return to the highest quality of work for the duo.

Gilbert & George spent years roaming East London (with a single jaunt up to North London for dinner) collecting the news headline posters posted on the knee-high hoardings that you see outside your local newspaper shop. These 'London Pictures' were sorted, classified and arranged into collections according to theme and keywords, of which 292 were reproduced for exhibition according to the pair's house style.

Headlines including 'Protests at Rail Fares Robbery', alongside '100 Police Smash Robbery Gang', or 'London Islam School 'Teaches Hate'' with 'BBC in Islam Cartoon War', all pasted along with images of the artists and your (stereo)typical urban London scene. The sheer scope of this show is impressive, and the headline trope is surprisingly effective, retaining its power across the large-scale of the exhibition. Having worked together for almost fifty years, it is also surprising how effective, powerful and fresh the pair's work remains. After a retrospective at Tate Modern in 2005, it would have been entirely understandable if Gilbert & George had quietly removed themselves from the spotlight - it being tantamount to receiving a Lifetieme Achievement Award - but no. Like the city that never gets old, Gilbert & George are welcome ever-presents.

Gilbert & George: 'London Pictures' is at the White Cube galleries (Hoxton, Mason's Yard and Bermondsey) until 12 May.

Because has been a fan of Ori Gersht since before it was a twinkle in Tank's eye, having had the pleasure of seeing an advance cut of his film Evaders at the artist's home some years ago. The film, which abstractly revisits the last days in the life of philosopher Walter Benjamin as he flees the Nazis through torturous, wintry mountain conditions, is one of the strongest in a rich vein of artists' films concerning myth and mythology that is so popular right now.

The two-screen installation is only one work in a new show by Gersht currently on display at the Imperial War Museum, titled This Storm Is What We Call Progress. In partnership with the photographic agency Photoworks, this exhibition deals with themes including conflict and its relation to personal histories and memory. Alongside Evaders is Will You Dance For Me?, a single-screen video piece depicting an 85-year old woman, rocking in a rocking chair, narrating a story of her experience as a young woman at Auschwitz. A series of photographs entitled Chasing Good Fortune accompany the filmed works. Gersht is a master of lens-based work and his photographs both complement and add to an already fertile ground that blurs the line between aesthetics and contents, with this series shifting the symbolism of the very Japanese, and very beautiful, imagery of the cherry blossom tree to parallel his explorations into the social effects of the war. This is a heart-breaking and thought-provoking show in which Gersht gently reminds us what it truly means to never forget.

Ori Gersht: This Storm Is What We Call Progress is at the Imperial War Museum until 29 April.