Regardless of anyone's opinion of Great Britain on the international stage - in any capacity - there can be no denying that we are among the world leaders in art and design.  A benefit of being besieged by visitors over the summer for that quadrennial event is the Cultural Olympiad, an opportunity to show off the very finest of British arts and culture to the world, in the spaces before, during and after the Games.

As part of the London 2012 Festival is Britain Creates 2012: Fashion + Art Collusion.  Led by the British Fashion Council/Bazaar Fashion Arts Foundation, iconic British designers have been paired with contemporary artists to collaborate on specially commissioned, unique works.  These exclusive pieces will be unveiled at a VIP Gala fundraising event tonight, before going on display at that most glorious of venues, the Victoria & Albert Museum.  The aim of the fundraiser is to provide bursaries to support emerging artists and designers, providing opportunities for future collaborations.

And the artist/designer pairings could not be more alluring: Hussein Chalayan + Gavin Turk, Giles Deacon + Jeremy Deller, Stephen Jones + Cerith Wyn Evans, Mary Katrantzou + Mark Titchener, Nicholas Kirkwood + Simon Periton, Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos + Francis Upritchard, Jonathan Saunders + Jess Flood-Paddock, Paul Smith + Charming Baker, and Matthew Williamson + Mat Collishaw.

Following its exhibition at the V&A, the pieces will be installed in the windows of Selfridges.  An accompanying book has also been produced, with texts by Lucy Yeomans and Iain R. Webb.  The book provides insights into all aspects the collaborative process, featuring proposals and sketches, exclusive photographs, specially commissioned portraits and a set of posters.  Sure to be a highlight of 2012 in and of itself, this event is one of the first to celebrate Britain at its creative best.

Britain Creates 2012: Fashion + Art Collusion is at the Victoria and Albert Museum between 06 - 29 July, and at Selfridges from 30 July to 19 August.

Top: A preliminary sketch from Matthew Williamson + Mat Collishaw

Middle: from Stephen Jones + Cerith Wyn Evans

Bottom: Jeremy Deller + Giles Deacon

David Cronenberg trades in body horror.  Those late night nasties that you used to watch on Channel 4 when you were a kid, only to find years later that these cult classics that made the name of one of the most unique Hollywood minds.  Videodrome, The Fly, Scanners, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, Crash…There's been a period, of about seven years now, where he has turned his hand to more traditional narrative drama - and to great acclaim with films such as A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and last year's A Dangerous Method, the psychological love triangle between Michael Fassbender's Freud, Viggo Mortensen's Jung and their protégé Sabine, played by Keira Knightley.

His new film is an uncomfortable - and uncompromising - amalgam of the two.  Less body horror and more brain horror, it proposes the question, 'What do you do when your fears are realised?'  Those intangible thoughts that trip through your mind before you have a chance to capture exactly what they are?  This is the currency that this film lives on.

Robert Pattinson is Eric Packer, a 28 year old billionaire - a master of the money markets.  He wants a haircut and insists on travelling across the city, despite there being in his way the funeral for a slain rap star and a presidential visit.  Why would this stop him?  Packer is, what Tom Wolfe would describe as 'Master of the Universe'.  In the 1980s, we were given Tom Hanks, but this is the 21^st century and the song might remain the same, it's Don DeLillo's source material we're playing with here.  Humanity is as rabid as Cronenberg's film of the same name.  Back to his surreal best (in this reviewer's humble opinion, there are many that would disagree), Cronenberg presents us with his version of downfall and excess; a thoroughly postmodern bonfire of vanity.

Cosmopolis is on general release now.

Time Out London's one-liner summation of this new show of work by Damien Hirst points out how there are none of the artist's figurative paintings in his blockbuster show, but that they can be found here, in his first exhibition at White Cube's new space in Bermondsey.  It's pretty astute.  It's also full of gargantuan ambition, to hold a show of thirty-five paintings in this massive gallery space.  In what promised to be a Damien Hirst year, the artist and his galleries have left no stone unturned.

There are dots, butterflies, birds, dogs and even an installation thrown in for good measure.  Clearly inspired by the geometric perspective of Francis Bacon, there is no question, despite what you may think of the man and his work, that this is 'art' in the traditional sense.  And despite artists and critics telling you that there's little room for value judgements in 'art' inevitably visitors to exhibitions will come away thinking that they either enjoyed it or they didn't - they thought it was good or they thought it was bad.

And here we have Hirst the Fine Artist.  With the exception of the size of the gallery there's little to tell a visitor of the hubris that surrounds the figure of this particular artist.  Which leaves us with the work.  Far beyond this writer to pass a value judgement, though I did enjoy the scale and the presentation of it all.  It's good ol' fashioned art, without the clamour or mess that goes on around it.  Is it any good?  Well, it's art.

Damien Hirst: Two Weeks One Summer is at White Cube Bermondsey until 08 July.