David Noonan, 2008, Installation view. Photo: Andy Keate

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, 25-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 based on extensive research and strong curatorial vision.


James Richards exhibition preview, 2011. Photo: Mark Blower

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 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 a new generation has emerged including artists such as Anja Kirschner & David Panos, Florian Hecker, Duncan Campbell, Pablo Bronstein, Josephine Pryde, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Amalia Pica.


A Sense of Place, 2011.

The gallery produces up to five major exhibitions and intermittent major live events, Interim, 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. New programmes 21st Century and Open Research host a diverse range of artists, curators, theorists and writers in a range of interdisciplinary, research-based projects with outcomes presented in our adjunct studio space.

Artists commissioned are always chosen due to their desire to explore pioneering new forms and discourses. We actively seek to represent and critically reflect on a diverse range of artistic interests and cultures.

Our online archive – going back to 1990 – is a dynamic research resource and visitors can access audio recordings of all our recent talks alongside documentation on all projects and weekly news features.

Commissions since 2008 have included major film productions, live performances, expanded cinema and cross-over activities with dance, music and theatre alongside painting and sculpture exhibitions or one off talks and film screenings.

Artists participating in the 2013/14 programme include Nasrin Tabatabai and Babak Afrassiabi, Mariana Castillo Deball, Pratchaya Phinthong, Cara Tolmie, Edward Thomasson, Nick Relph, Jordan Wolfson and Camille Henrot.


Cornelia Parker, Cold Dark Matter - An Exploded View, 1991.

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.

Offsite includes commissions, collaborations and residencies all taking place outside the gallery. The core focus is on commissioning artists who have specific interests in collaboration and direct engagement with social and cultural contexts. The format aims to facilitate multi-platform outcomes, from site-specific and live events to online platforms; involving local to international partnerships, both intergenerational and interdisciplinary, and provoking unexpected outcomes.

Propeller is a self-directed forum for young people (15-20 years), offering creative learning opportunities beyond formal education. Propeller meets monthly at Chisenhale Gallery holding regular workshops, excursions and public events. Each year the programme is produced in association with a lead artist.

The education programme supports and sustains the development of artists’ practice by offering opportunities for a range of practitioners to devise projects that take both the exhibitions programme and their own practice as the starting point for participants’ engagement. These include artist-led workshops, family days, parents’ coffee mornings and teachers’ previews on site at the gallery.


Chisenhale Editions, 2012. Photo: Mark Blower

Chisenhale Gallery is a registered charity and one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations. The programme is fundraised for in entirety through funding bodies, sponsors, trusts and foundations, private benefactors and earned income streams such as sales of limited edition prints and event ticketing.

Resource sharing is central to all our activities and we continuously seek to develop new networks and reach new audiences locally, nationally and internationally through strategic collaborations with partner organisations on the commissioning and production of projects as well as exchanging ideas and research.

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

Supported by a committed and dynamic Board of Trustees the five permanent gallery staff are led by the Director. The gallery offers extensive volunteering opportunities and provides formative training experiences enabling the development of future arts professionals. As an organisation we regularly aim to take the lead and provide a strong voice for the small-scale galleries sector within the wider arts ecology in London, nationally and internationally.

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Chisenhale Gallery
Registered charity no. 1026175
Registered company no. 02851794
Company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales
Registered office 64 Chisenhale Road, London E3 5QZ

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