Following on from yesterday's post, we find ourselves moving to the North gallery at the London outpost of Hauser & Wirth. Leaving behind Mary Heilmann, we are presented here with the work an artist who works at the other end of the spectrum of painting. Michael Raedecker is a fine artist in the traditional sense, creating work that is feels more tied to a pre-twentieth century art historical tradition. Though quieter, pensive pieces than Heilmann's post-pop aesthetic, the shows together provide a very interesting and engaging juxtaposition.

The capital's commercial galleries have opened 2012 with a series of shows of some of their most famous names and the results, though very striking, have a tendency to err on the side of self-satisfaction. It's rare to find a large, international commercial gallery making a show that sensitises the art on display but this is precisely the feeling that you get viewing Raedecker's work here - particularly if you've seen the Heimann previously.

In this exhibition of new work, the Dutch-born, London-based Raedecker, takes as his subjects the fanciful but ordinary: chandeliers, wedding cakes, country cottages. Etched and painted, the canvasses are then cut and stitched back together in collage conflagrations. Less subversion of the artist's chosen medium but more an investigation into the effects of paint in less-than-stable conditions. These are haunting, evocative pictures that disrupt their subjects as much as Heilmann's. This is a show that almost makes you wish that a large public institution had placed the work of these artists together, in context with a few more of their contemporaries. It's not to say that visiting this exhibition is like going through the Prado without lunch, but there's a very thoughtful exploration into the work of these two artists occurring here and, though the shows together mightn't be perfect, it's almost definitely the most attractive offer a commercial gallery can give an audience right now.

Michael Raedecker: volume is at Hauser & Wirth until 05 April.

When it comes to high-profile centres of learning, the arts are very well-served in London. With the six constituent colleges that make up University of the Arts, Goldsmith's, Ravensbourne, Slade and the RA school (to name only the highest profile dedicated art colleges), London-based art students are spoiled for choice. One of the world's most reputable, however, is the Royal College of Art. Expanding this Autumn to incorporate four new design-based courses, to complement their spanking new campus in Battersea (named from one of their most successful alumni), the college is breathing new life into itself after what was a very bad year for higher education institutions. The reputation, though, remains solid and currently on exhibition is the graduation show of one of the world's most well-known departments.

If you've been to a contemporary art museum or read an art magazine in the past fifteen years you're likely to have seen the work of a graduate from the department of Curating Contemporary Art. The latest cohort currently exhibit Ritual Without Myth, a group show of work by ten artists exploring the ethereal and transcendental. A fitting topic; it's often said that great art has almost a spiritual power, that great art is part of a grand enlightenment. Conversely, it's also often said that curating should be an invisible art, that it should lead, but subtly. The work on display here is, indeed, subtle. Comprised primarily of film and video installation, the viewer is led to tread a path which almost mirrors that of Orpheus: carpets and curtains of red and black curtail our passage. Moving image-based exhibition forces the viewer to slow down, and the show has been installed in such a way that it is nearly impossible to look back at work once you've moved past it. The curators make evident the structures that centres of contemporary art put in place in order to have art exhibit their transformative elements.

There's nothing subtle about this show, but it's a graduate show and one of the most high-profile (especially coming, as it does, almost three months earlier than most others). Will it be remembered in such glowing terms as the show of work by John Smith from CCA students three years ago? That's the legacy of great curatorship, and we can but see.

Ritual Without Myth is at the Royal College of Art until 25 March.

Maybe we can put it down to the success of The Artist, but there's been a small renaissance in the public's love affair with great and classic cinema. It'd be romantic to think that a single film could be the instigator for such a wave of dream - particularly a film that's a love letter to the medium itself. Alas, Because Culture feels that it may be the dearth of good cinema that has been created and distributed in recent years. Hats off, then, to being in London at such a point in time! Head down to the BFI and soak up the glittering gems by director Carl Theodor Dreyer, or - better still - pop down to the ICA tonight for a double-bill by one of the twentieth century's true originals.

Italian cinema didn't have a particularly great century; really, the nation only found it's voice in the post-war period with realist depictions of low lives and the impact of being poor on one's moral conditions. Following from such trailblazers as Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini (father of Because favourite Isabella), and Luchino Visconti, came Pier Paolo Pasolini. A published poet in his teens, Pasolini became a very public figure: An authority on Romantic literature, a published novelist, a writer and radio personality, he often courted controversy with his Communist bent. His homosexuality was an open secret (at a time in Fascist Italy when it was, like in most of Europe, illegal), he had as many enemies as he had friends, and he was murdered at the age of 53, being repeatedly run over by his own car in an act that was, by various accounts, due to Mafia action, his communism, or due to robbery.

The ICA kick off an evening with Pasolini with his first feature film, Accattone. The Italian word for 'beggar', the film follows Vittorio, a pimp who is forced to go to even further extreme circumstance when his prostitute is sent to prison. Pasolini is known for his picaresque neorealism, where a rogue of a character is depicted in downtrodden condition, though usually satirically. The second film in the Pasolini double bill is The Gospel According to St. Matthew - a retelling of the story of Jesus, from Nativity to Resurrection. Not an event that takes place too often, even in London, this evening comes highly recommended.

Accattone plays at ICA Cinema 1 tonight at 1815.

The Gospel According to St. Matthew plays at ICA Cinema 2 at 2045.