Chisenhale Gallery

Chisenhale Gallery supports the production and presentation of new forms of artistic activity and engages diverse audiences, both local and international. This expands on our award winning, 30-year history as one of London’s most innovative forums for contemporary art and our reputation for producing important solo commissions with artists at a formative point in their career. 

We enable emerging or under-represented artists to make significant steps and pursue important new directions in their practice. At the heart of our programme is a remit to commission new work, supporting artists from project inception to realisation and representing an inspiring and challenging range of voices, nationalities and art forms. 

For audiences, Chisenhale Gallery provides an opportunity to experience the process of art production intimately – this is a place where art is not collected for presentation but where it is made – and this in itself provides important learning opportunities to critically reflect and participate. As such Chisenhale Gallery operates alternately as an exhibition hall, production agency, research centre and community resource.

In the 1990s Chisenhale Gallery produced their first public exhibitions with artists such as Rachel Whiteread, Cornelia Parker, Gillian Wearing, Sam Taylor Wood, Wolfgang Tillmans, Paul Noble, Pipilotti Rist and Thomas Hirschorn. Artists who have participated in the recent exhibitions programme include: James Richards, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Amalia Pica, Helen Marten, Ed Atkins, Mariana Castillo Deball, Pratchaya Phinthong, Nick Relph, Jordan Wolfson, Camille Henrot, Céline Condorelli, Edward Thomasson and Ed Fornieles. 

Artists participating in the programme have been nominated for the Turner Prize, the Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists, the Jarman Award, the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, The Future Generation Art Prize and the Hugo Boss Prize, and participated in major international exhibitions including the Venice Biennial and documenta.

In January 2014 Chisenhale Director Polly Staple was awarded the 2014 Genesis Prize, ‘recognising her work as an outstanding mentor of artistic talent’. This award, worth £25,000, will enable Chisenhale Gallery to expand the scope and quality of its programme by supporting four new commissions by young artists in 2014 and 2015.

Chisenhale Gallery occupies a renovated 1930s veneer factory on Chisenhale Road located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, close to Victoria Park in the heart of London’s East End. With a committed local audience we aim to be a key organisation for artist led activities within the Tower Hamlets community, with a particular focus on providing activities for young people.