This August, two venerable Shanghai institutions shine a spotlight on international architecture, whilst elsewhere there's behind-the-scenes factory action, bear skin art, and a surprising take on the humble cocktail party...

Share, But It's Not Fair @ Rockbund Art Museum

We'd heard a lot about Paola Pivi's Share, But It's Not Fair over at Rockbund, the Italian artist's first China solo opened last month. Curiosity sufficiently piqued by widely used press pics of one of seven works on show, an elliptical installation of a nose-to-tail (fake) bear skins called What Goes Round–Art Comes Round, we went looking for answers. None were forthcoming, but that's kind of the point here – Pivi's art is so open-ended, it positively flaunts its lack of decipherable narrative, themes and all that other gubbins you kind of expect from an exhibition. Which of course, is not to say it's bad: the sheer scale of works like It's A Cocktail Party alone is undeniably impressive – nine enormous, elevated taps, releasing torrents of various liquids, all making for quite a din and a rather stinky artwork. That bold, statement title becomes at once absurd, curious and maybe even apt – either way, it forces memories, associations and ideas, none of which are necessarily 'right', but certainly aren't wrong. Whilst we weren't bowled over, we did leave feeling pleasingly baffled...

Assembly Line @ OV Gallery

Manufacturer to the world, China's industry is one of its strengths – for all the Middle Kingdom-made commodities out there, though, the realities of production are rarely glimpsed, or, perhaps, even considered. Enter Li Xiaofei, a Hunan-born artist who, for the past three years, has been traveling the Yangtze River Delta region, visiting and documenting factories and the lives of the workers within. Excerpts from the resulting series, Assembly Line, are currently on show at OV Gallery and offer a fascinating insight into China's integral, oft overlooked economic backbone. What you've got is a series of photographs of things like giant spools for printing, enormous looms and tangles of piping, all drab in color, intricate in detail and thoroughly absorbing. Alongside are a couple of documentary style interviews, the most interesting of which sees a factory's Women's Federation Director draw unspoken parallels between her role promoting China's One Child Policy to female employees, and the prosperity of the company. For all the whirring, grinding, pounding monotony on show here, Li doesn't pass judgment on the conditions he captures. Rather, we see a raw, washed-out, mechanical China, and the army of individuals behind the machines. Good stuff.

Foster + Partners: the Art of Architecture @ Shanghai Oil Painting & Sculpture Institute

A new exhibition over at Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute passes by the ongoing show of sporting excellence that is the London Olympics, and instead profiles one of the city's most acclaimed architectural exports – not to mention a who's who of landmark buildings in the English capital. Foster + Partners: the Art of Architecture is the first major survey of the studio's work ever to be held in China, and part of the ongoing UK Now festivities. On display are almost 100 architectural models, photographs and sketches, detailing projects and proposals completed internationally since the practice's inception back in 1967. Best of all are the intricate scale models of such iconic builds as New York's Hearst Tower, Beijing Airport's Terminal 3, and from London, the British Museum's spectacular Great Court, and our fave, 30 St Mary Axe, more commonly known as The Gherkin. All lit up and peopled by teeny tiny workers, it's like a really, really cool doll's house. The exhibition is divided up thematically into sections like high rise, sustainability, infrastructure, and urban design, all absorbing and an absolute must for architecture aficionados.

Mock Up: Architecture of Spatial Art @ MoCA

Although it doesn't do it with the same consistency as the Foster show, MoCA's own architectural foray marks an interesting departure from the venue's more recent fashion and art-led program. Mock Up: Architecture of Spatial Art opened this weekend and sees a whole host of architects and artists come together to reimagine, reinterpret and reconsider our relationship with the domestic living space. The two-story museum has been roughly divided into 10 'rooms' – living room, kitchen, study and so on – where teams of architects including Atelier Deshaus, Zhang Bin + Zhou Wei and KUU push some boundaries and get conceptual. Our favorite by far is a collaboration between Yu Ting and lighting designer Unolai. It's pretty magical, successfully channeling abstract elements of the bathroom into a multisensory experience: silky-cool strands of optical fiber evoke a glistening shower, or bathing in phosphorus, or perhaps swarming fireflies... Filled with the sound of trickling water and clean wafts of aromatic oils, around the corner are floor to ceiling mirrors, and an altogether different lighting effect...