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.

Very few of today's most popular art institutions aee as traditional as the Royal Academy; indeed, it is a contemporary trend for today's art museums to be as current and as state-of-the-art as can be imagined. Displayed in the main galleries, Hockney is the show of the moment in town but in the Burlington Gardens gallery that backs onto the RA - in the building that was once the Museum of Mankind, and that was once Haunch of Venison - the old lady of fine art exhibition shows us just what it is that keeps her so fresh and so appealing.

Premiums is interim show of the students of the Royal Academy school. This two-year studio practice in Fine Arts training is one of the strongest in the country. A very exclusive course (only seventeen students are selected from over a thousand applications), the school prides itself on the quality of the work produced by the artists in residence. Regular readers will know of the affinity I have for student exhibitions, but interim shows can be very unstable situations.

This show is really rather good, and bodes very well for the Royal Academy school over the coming year, and for London-based fine art enthusiasts in the longer term. The museum is a large and difficult space to fill, success has evaded much more established artists in the past, and though the work presented here falls into similar traps at points the overall quality and impact remains. A single-channel video by Adham Faramawy dominates proceedings and though it is by no means the best work on show (nor even the best moving image work) it indicates towards a well-considered practice made manifest and speaks to the mind of a very modern man. Because were delighted by the minimalist conceptual effort developed by Prem Sahib in a series of works that would be some of the strongest in almost any given exhibition context. Exposing a common space (in this aspect, a live/work studio) through its most mundane features made glaringly explicit, the idea that good artists make very simple conceits look daringly easy in execution, but that the artist can express and is able to place him- or herself within an evident art historical context is a strong characteristic of this work. These are not easy things to manage, but are indicative of an exciting future for art lovers, and, for an interim show, you really can't ask for anything more.

Premiums is on at the Royal Academy of Art between 02 - 15 March.

There was a lot of talk when the recession hit a few years ago about how a dip in the financial economy could actually be a positive sign for the artistic economy: With artists of all kinds needing to be less dependent on sources of funding there opened up opportunities for avant-garde experimentation, the creation of works that are less institutionally reliant.

The great example given was to look to the great boom-and-bust period of the 1980s, and this is the topic of a great new film documentary screening from this weekend at the ICA.

Blank City takes us from London to New York and tells the story of the artistic underground. Under the influence of artists including Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, there came a brand branded the No Wave. Debbie Harry and Blondie, Jim Jarmusch, Lizzie Borden: These were some of the people at the face of this new scene, developing an aesthetic that transcends with an independent spirit through art today. Featuring interviews including with Jarmusch, Thurston Moore, John Waters, Fab 5 Freddy, Richard Kern and Nick Zedd, if you're lucky enough to get tickets for this Friday's screening, it will include a Q&A with Director Celine Dahnier, producer Aviva Wishnow and producer/editor Vanessa Roworth.

Blank City is at the ICA between 02 - 15 March.