2022 Commissions Programme

Chisenhale Gallery’s Commissions Programme for 2022 comprises three new exhibitions by artists Rachel Jones, Nikita Gale and Ayo Akingbade. We are also pleased to present a new event-based commission by young artists from The Coborn Centre for Adolescent Mental Health, Newham, and their staff, with the vacuum cleaner (James Leadbitter) made in collaboration with Caroline Moore.

With research and production taking place in Lagos, London and Los Angeles, the artists in the 2022 Commissions Programme work with painting, performance, sound and film to address themes such as home, self-knowledge and collaboration. As part of the commissioning process, a bespoke series of talks and events is programmed in conversation with each artist and runs throughout the duration of every exhibition.

Chisenhale Gallery was founded by artists. The same experimental vision and spirit of possibility that changed an empty veneer factory and brewery warehouse into an art gallery guides our work today. We commission and produce contemporary art, supporting international and UK-based artists to make their most ambitious work to date by pursuing new directions in their practices. The gallery has an award winning, 39-year history as one of London’s most innovative forums for contemporary art.

Rachel Jones
12 March-11 June , 2022

say cheeeeese is a new commission by Rachel Jones and her first solo exhibition in an institution. Working with painting, installation and performance, Jones examines ways of expressing that which can be seen and sensed rather than uttered. Jones’ oil pastel works on canvas and paper often repeat symbols, colours and textures, creating associative, even familial, relationships between works varying in scale, from the monumental to the hand-held and jewel-like. For her Chisenhale Gallery commission, Jones develops her use of oil pastels to produce a new body of work on canvas and paper, and a series of large-scale stickers that line the gallery walls and exterior doors. 

Nikita Gale
9 July-16 October, 2022

Artist Nikita Gale sculpts concrete, metal, light, and sound. Composing unforgettable installations through interventions both spatial and sonic alongside moving image works, Gale possesses a unique material sensibility through which she forges abstract connections between image and text, memory and identity, history and now. Chisenhale Gallery presents the artist’s first solo exhibition in a UK institution. Gale’s deeply researched practice orbits themes of invisibility and audibility, interrogating the complicated dynamic between performer and spectator, structure and decay. The through-line of the commission is the potential for new ways of being and relating to arise from resourcefully existing undetected among wreck and ruin. 

Ayo Akingbade
12 November, 2022-11 February, 2023

Show Me The World Mister is a new film commissioned by artist Ayo Akingbade. Shot on location in Nigeria, the commission builds on Akingbade’s lucid interrogations of history and place, addressing the interwoven histories of industrialisation, colonisation and family. The film is produced by Chisenhale Gallery and Spike Island, Bristol, and commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery; Spike Island; the Whitworth, The University of Manchester; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. Following its Chisenhale premiere, the work will be exhibited at partner venues through 2024.

the vacuum cleaner 
21 November, 2022-4 December, 2022

For They Let In The Light is a new live commission by young artists from The Coborn Centre for Adolescent Mental Health, Newham, and their staff, with the vacuum cleaner (James Leadbitter) made in collaboration with Caroline Moore. In the spring of 2021, the vacuum cleaner and Moore collaborated with the young people at The Coborn Centre to make a series of video, text and audio responses to the question, “why are so many young people struggling with mental health?” The resulting co-produced work will be presented across a series of immersive events at Chisenhale Gallery that challenge how mental health is understood, treated and experienced.

Chisenhale Gallery is a registered charity and part of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio. All of our exhibitions are free.

Chisenhale Gallery’s commission and production partners include Spike Island, Bristol; the Whitworth, The University of Manchester; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.

Chisenhale Gallery 2022 Commissions Programme is produced with support from the Art Fund and Chisenhale Gallery Commissions Fund and also made possible by: Lead Supporters: The Foundation Foundation, Shane Akeroyd, Thaddaeus Ropac gallery and Pamela J. Joyner. Headline Supporters: Henry Moore Foundation, Necessity, Concrete Projects, The Clare McKeon Charitable Trust and the Rennie Collection. Corporate Headline Supporter: Kleinwort Hambros. With additional support from Alexander V. Petalas and the Nikita Gale Supporter’s Circle. Chisenhale Gallery’s 2022 Talks and Events Programme 2022 is supported by Brian Boylan.

Chisenhale Gallery’s current exhibition Law of Large Numbers: Our Selves by Rindon Johnson, is on view until 6 February, 2022. 

For further information please contact: T +44 (0) 20 3328 1964 / media@chisenhale.org.uk