An hour-long spoken-word performance piece is among the works by four artists shortlisted for this year's Turner Prize.

The winner of the UK's most prestigious art prize, which comes with an award of $33,768, will be announced on December 10 at a ceremony at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in northern England.

The shortlisted artists - Simeon Barclay, Kira Freije, Marguerite Humeau and Tanoa Sasraku - will also see their work go on show at the gallery from September.

Barclay's performance work, The Ruin, was hailed by the jury for its "exploration of Britishness, class, race and masculine identity".

Alex Farquharson, director of London's Tate Britain and jury chair, said all four artists "offer distinct perspectives through which to explore the world around us, and to reflect on our place within it".

Previous winners of the prize include Jesse Darling, Martin Creed and Gilbert & George.

The cost of launching a proposed Culture Pass scheme in Australia to give a $71.50 voucher to all 16-to-21-year-olds to spend on Australian shows, books and performances in a bid to boost the nation's creative industries.

Paintings of suggestively arranged bananas are among the works on show in the National Gallery of Singapore's first-ever 18-rated exhibition.

Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art opens tomorrow with more than 70 works on show including the paintings from Ahmad Zakii Anwar's Sixtynine series of erotic images of fruit as well as Julie Lluch's sculpture Lily for Georgia O’Keeffe.

Chief curator Patrick Flores said "conversations about pleasure and the body remain shielded in the region’s public sphere" but he hoped the show "demonstrates how complex subjects can be approached with intellectual rigor and curatorial care".

1 - Five new paintings by Os Gemeos - the name used by Brazilian twins Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo - can be seen at their show opening tonight at Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York. The show, which runs to June 6, comes after their first US museum survey exhibition at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC and features 1980s-style boomboxes and retro musical instruments in a nod to their roots in Sao Paulo's hip-hop scene.

2 - Belgian photographer Dirk Braeckman has his first solo show in the UK opening today at London's GRIMM gallery. The show, which features recent work from his more than four decade-long career, comes ahead of the planned unveiling of his major new commission at Brussels Zaventem Airport consisting of two 90-metre-long friezes.

3 - Emma Talbot has followed up her recent large-scale commission for New York's New Museum with a solo show at London's Hales gallery. The exhibition, which opens today, runs to May 22 and includes silk paintings, drawings and sculpture.

1 - Work starts on Monday to remove San Francisco's Vaillancourt Fountain after a lengthy legal battle. The brutalist landmark, which has been in the city's Embarcadero Plaza since 1972, was made by Canadian sculptor Armand Vaillancourt who is among those opposing its removal. The San Francisco Chronicle reported city staff will take a week to catalog the separate pieces so it can reassembled later.

2 - New paintings by Anselm Kiefer are going on show next month at the Gagosian gallery at 541 West 24th Street in New York. The works include oils and acrylics and some feature a deep green sediment produced by exposing copper, salts and fluids to an electrical current which Kiefer describes as the "physical realization" of a "long-standing interest in alchemy".

3 - Control of a 1,500-strong collection of "orphaned" art could be handed over by the Dutch state to a foundation created by the nation's Jewish community. Work by Rembrandt and Frans Hals are included in the collection which was repatriated to the country from Germany after World War II and consists of work whose owners could not be traced with many presumed to have been murdered in the Holocaust.

4 - Artist Andy Goldsworthy and philanthropists Cynthia Fry Gunn and John A. Gunn were honored at the annual gala of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The party in the city's Golden Gate Park raised more than $2.38 million for the museums – the most in the event's history.

5 - The international jury for this year's Venice Biennale will be led by Brazilian curator Solange Oliveira Farkas. She will be joined by Zoe Butt, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Marta Kuzma and Giovanna Zapperi with the awards ceremony taking place on May 9.

6 - The controversial installation of Claire Tabouret's contemporary stained-glass windows in Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral is a step closer after a permit for the work was posted. A legal challenge from the French Sites and Monuments association is expected to be filed before work can begin.