Chisenhale Gallery

Chisenhale Gallery occupies a renovated 1930s veneer factory on Chisenhale Road located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Since 1980 the veneer factory and Godson’s brewery industrial buildings have been occupied by three organisations: Chisenhale Gallery, Chisenhale Dance Space and Chisenhale Art Place Trust (CAPT). Chisenhale Gallery has an established reputation for producing important solo commissions with artists often at a formative stage in their career. In the 1990s the Gallery produced exhibitions with artists such as Rachel Whiteread, Cornelia Parker, Gillian Wearing, Sam Taylor Wood, Wolfgang Tillmans, Paul Noble, Pipilotti Rist, Peter Friedl and Thomas Hirschorn and more recently with Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer, David Noonan, Anja Kirschner & David Panos, Florian Hecker, Melanie Gilligan and Linder.

Chisenhale Gallery is one of London’s most innovative galleries for contemporary visual art, promoting national and international developments in visual culture through its ambitious commissioning of solo exhibitions and programme of public events including performances, film screenings and talks. At the heart of Chisenhale Gallery’s programme is a remit to commission new work, supporting artists from project inception to realization, providing creative support and discussion as much as fundraising and production. The gallery aims to reflect new forms of artistic production, and to propose alternative models responding to the needs of artists as both participants and our core audience. Chisenhale continuously seeks to develop new networks and reach new audiences both locally and on an international stage through partnering with organisations on the commissioning and production of projects. As such Chisenhale Gallery acts alternately as a classical exhibition hall, production agency, research center and community hub.

The gallery currently produces up to five major exhibitions each year. Artists are given a platform to make ambitious new work often in response to the gallery’s unique space, a converted factory of 2,500 square feet. The autumn 2010 programme includes solo exhibitions with Michael Fullerton and Hito Steyerl and the programme for 2011 includes solo exhibitions with Daniel Sinsel, Janice Kerbel, Josephine Pryde, James Richards and Christina Mackie and an offsite project with Amalia Pica.

Most outstanding projects in recent years:

Anja Kirshner & David Panos, The Last Days of Jack Sheppard, a film & installation co-commissioned with CCA, Glasgow; 8 May–21 June 2009.

Florian Hecker, a solo exhibition of electro-acoustic works; co-commissioned with IKON Gallery, Birmingham; 12 February–28 March 2010.

Melanie Gilligan. Popular Unrest, a film, installation and website co-commissioned with Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Walter Philips Gallery, The Banff Centre, Banff and Presentation House, North Vancouver; 7 May–20 June 2010.

Linder, The Darktown Cakewalk: Celebrated from the House of FAME, 10th July 2010, 10am–11pm,  a 13 hour performance event by artist and musician Linder in collaboration with musician Stuart McCallum and fashion designer Richard Nicoll produced in collaboration with Sorcha Dallas Glasgow.

Ruth Ewan Dreadnoughts, a programme of walking tours investigating the radical history of Tower Hamlets,  2–4 July 2010.

To accompany each exhibition Chisenhale Gallery programmes a series of talks and events ranging from gallery tours lead by London-based Curators, artists’ talks and in-conversation events, to lectures by practitioners from related fields of research. Interim is a series of event-based projects which takes place in between exhibitions and is hosted within or commissioned for Chisenhale Gallery’s unique gallery space. Previous Interim events have included live projects by Linder, Emily Roysdon & Ian White, Pablo Bronstein and Bonnie Camplin.

21st Century is a year-long research-based programme of talks, film screenings, publication launches, small scale curated programmes and performances. Presented as once monthly evening events in its adjunct studio space and concurrent to any activities in the gallery programme, 21st Century supports emerging artists, writers, critics and theorists often giving them a first opportunity for a public platform alongside occasionally offering more established practitioners the opportunity to present developing projects in an informal environment. 21st Century links with university programmes and crosses a range of disciplines including architecture, music, philosophy and critical theory.

Chisenhale holds approximately 3–4 Interim events, 8–10 21st Century events, 12–15 exhibition talks / events each year.

Education at Chisenhale Gallery enables greater access to contemporary art by extending and developing new audiences. All projects position the gallery as a local resource where people are provided with opportunities to engage with contemporary art through the agency of artists. Built around individual projects is a network of community advocates and partnership organisations that support the local community in visiting the gallery.

The programme supports and sustains the development of artists’ practice by offering opportunities for a wide range of practitioners, to devise projects that take both the exhibitions programme and their own practice as the starting point for participants’ engagement.

Programme strands include: A Sense of Place, a socially engaged exchange programme for local secondary schools, artist residencies in local primary schools, practice based research into art education, artist-led community projects, family days, parent coffee mornings and teachers’ previews on site at the gallery.

Chisenhale works with schools, colleges and universities in a number of ways to engage participants with contemporary art practice. The gallery currently works in partnership with the Whitechapel Gallery and Bow Arts Trust to deliver Find Your Talent, a Tower Hamlets Council initiative delivering professional development for teachers in the borough and out-of-school-hours activities for young people. Chisenhale links with university courses through its 21st Century programme, as well as facilitating group visits for university courses with each exhibition.

Chisenhale holds approximately 30 educational projects each year.

The gallery comprises an uninterrupted 2500 square foot space with concrete floors. The adjacent studio space is 660 square feet.

Chisenhale’s spaces include; one Gallery space and one flexible studio space for events, education workshops, screenings etc.