Exhibitionist: The week's art shows in pictures

Flatpack Festival, Birmingham This now annual event draws together an unorthodox collection of films, with a distinct spirit of irreverent mischief underlying its electric mix of screenings, performances and talks. Shown here is a still from Jam, by the Japanese director Mirai Mizue. Around Birmingham until 27 March Photograph: PR Ant Macari, Sunderland With all his cross-references between symbols, cosmic diagrams and mathematical quandaries, it can be hard to tell whether Macari is being deeply earnest or, well, having us on. Shown here is Accidental Fraser Spiral (2010). At the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art until 14 April Photograph: PR Dirt: The Filthy Reality Of Everyday Life, London This history of muck begins with cleanliness-fixated domestic life in 17th-century Holland, moving on to the slums and pest-houses that crowded the streets of Victorian London, through to contemporary Delhi and, lastly, an American landfill site of the future. Above, medical facilities available at a modern health centre contrasted with ill health in old-fashioned housing, by Abram Games and Army Bureau of Current Affairs. At the Wellcome Collection until 31 August Photograph: Wellcome Images Monika Kinley: A Life In Art, Plymouth Collector, curator and erstwhile art dealer, Monika Kinley is well known as an aficionado of outsider art. However, as this autobiographical exhibition demonstrates, her interests are wide-ranging. Pictured here, a piece by Henry Darger, an artist by whom she is particularly fascinated. At the Plymouth Arts Centre until 1 May Photograph: PR Guy Ben-Ner, Sheffield Guy Ben-Ner makes deceptively simple videos which make all kinds of furtive references to the history of cinema, documentary film, classical literature and theatre. Sometimes, as above, they feature the man himself, too. At the Site gallery, Sheffield until 14 May Photograph: PR Philip Taaffe, Dublin The abstract and semi-abstract paintings of the renowned American artist Philip Taaffe go against several of modernism's aesthetic rules: they unashamedly use decoration, patterning, symmetry and charming colour combinations. Shown here is Composition with Ornamental Fragments II, 2009. At the Irish Museum of Modern Art until 12 June Photograph: PR Syd Barrett: Art and Letters, London This show promises a truly unique glimpse into the private creative world of prog rock's great, troubled genius. His expressionist paintings, with surrealist leanings, feature everything from tribesmen to a tortoise. Above, Untitled 6, 1963. At the Idea Generation gallery until 10 April Photograph: PR Chantal Joffe, London Joffe has taken painterly inspiration from the likes of Alice Neel, Picasso and Degas, but her models' origins tend to be fashion-magazine spreads. She has also worked from her own photos of the backstage areas of catwalk shows. Above, 2010's Untitled. At Victoria Miro until 21 April Photograph: PR