You have to love living in London.  Anybody who doesn’t is not doing it right.  Sure, no-one is saying that you can’t leave for a little while, but the draw of the big city is irresistible, irrefutable.  As your dear Culture Editor, it’s my job to make sure that you get out there and see as much as possible in the town that can -- literally -- offer you anything and everything you want.

Meet us tomorrow in The Old King’s Head on Borough High Street.  We’ll be sat near Catharine Arnold whose latest book, City of Sin: London and its Vices, is being brought to near-literal life by the South East London Folklore Society.  It’s a special kind of Valentine’s Day treat.

We’re there for a talk, because Arnold will detail -- from the second century to the present day – the life of vice that has made London one of the most carnal, lusty, desirous and wicked cities on Earth.  Giving stories of brothels, bathhouses, courtesans (and folk of much lower moral fortitude), as well as all manner of illicit behaviours, this is a colourful tour of London that you’re unlikely to find in many other places.  Of course Arnold glosses over some of the more painfully harsh realities, but we’re not here for a lesson in inequalities in social history, this is a romp through the city’s more vibrant side.  There’ll be laughs, double entendres, and a more than a few cheeky titters.  If London hasn’t been your cup of tea so far, let’s see what else we can throw at you.

City of Sin: London and its Vices is at The Old King’s Head, 45-49 Borough High Street, tomorrow, 14 February from 2000.

Lisson Gallery seem to be expert at working with some of the most significant names in contemporary art at the moment of their reconsideration in major London institutions.  A new exhibition of work by Gerard Byrne is no different.

Byrne, whose current exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery is the Kunsthalle's first important show of the year, presents at Lisson Gallery Present Continuous Past.  The works on display here examine the conditions and the processes of creating art and being an artist.  Known best for his filmed reconstructions of meetings and conversations between artists, philosophers and ordinary people, this display comprises film, video and photography, and is a thoughtful counterpoint to larger-scale show further east.

Byrne’s works are about humour, language, the translation of text to image and the knotty relationship that the two share.  One of the most interesting series on display here is called Images or shadows of divine things.  Working backward from the studies of 18^th century theologian Jonathan Edwards, this set of works interrogates the notion of the divine in nature.  These monochrome images, shot across the United States over the past seven years, exhibit precisely what Byrne does best -- enact the historical among the contemporary.  Go to Whitechapel, and then come back west to Lisson Gallery.  It’s a journey through art history that will keep you going back for more.

Gerard Byrne: Present Continuous Past is at Lisson Gallery until 09 March.

Mobile Suit Academy is the new exhibition by David Blandy.  This immersive installation at south London’s Peckham Space is comprised of entirely new work made by the artist in which he transforms the gallery into a science-fiction landscape, invoking the spirit of a travelling starship.  Sounds bonkers?  It may be, but that’s half the fun.

The academy is populated with Mobile Suits – the name given to life-sized robotic exoskeletons traditionally worn by space travellers in Japanese anime comics, in throwbacks to ancient samurai culture.  Visitors to the exhibition tour the bridge of a Manga-esque spacecraft that exists both in outer space in SE15.  Video panels embedded into the shuttle show an alternative Peckham, starring students of Harris Academy @ Peckham in their own invented Mobile Suits.

This is the core to Blandy’s work.  Influenced heavily by hip-hop and cartoon culture, the artist worked with the students in autumn 2012, inspiring them to explore their own personalities, fears and desires in order to create their own, metaphorical, Mobile Suits.  Like all of his work, it is a postmodern spin on identity and autobiography.  We are all, nowadays, products of our multimedia world.  Says the artist: “…the Mobile Suit was an interesting metaphor for the way we construct an external identity to shield our vulnerable selves.  Being a teenager is a time of flux, trying on different identities to see how they fit.”  The result is comforting, funny and exciting to watch.  It can’t come much more highly recommended.

Mobile Suit Academy by David Blandy is at Peckham Space until 24 March.