Established | December 1986 |
---|---|
Location | London |
Coordinates | 51°31′59″N0°02′22″W / 51.53315°N 0.03955°W |
Type | Non profit art gallery |
Director | Zoé Whitley [1] |
Public transit access | No. 277, 425, 339 or D6 bus; Mile End Bethnal Green |
Website | www.chisenhale.org.uk |
Chisenhale Gallery is a non-profit contemporary art gallery based in London's East End. The gallery occupies the ground level of a former veneer factory on Chisenhale Road, situated in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, near Victoria Park and flanking the Hertford Union Canal. Housed in the same building are two other distinct initiatives: Chisenhale Studios and Chisenhale Dance Space, named also for the road on which they reside.
The gallery’s exhibitions are free admission. The typical structure of the annual exhibitions programme is to present up to four new solo artist commissions (e.g. one each in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter in a given year). The selected artists, whether based in the UK or internationally, are invited to participate as the result of curatorial research taking place in advance of an 18-month to 2-year concept development and production process.
Chisenhale Gallery also has a Social Practice programme, which prioritises working with young people who experience barriers to accessing art and culture in hospitals, [2] Child Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and alternative provision settings.
Chisenhale’s location has been occupied by factories for industrial manufacture since at least the mid-19th century, but the building’s precise origins are unclear. There are Tower Hamlets planning documents which point to operating factories on Chisenhale Road as early as the 1850s, [3] and the site appears as ‘Pasteboard Works’ on a map surveyed in 1870. [4] However, it is understood that the building as it exists today was built either partially or entirely at a later date.
The Chisenhale Works building which currently houses the gallery was built between 1942 and 1943, [5] purportedly in the rubble of houses destroyed during The Blitz. The most recent iteration of the factory was operated by the furniture-maker [6] Morris Cohen, trading as CHN Veneers (per the historic plaque erected by the gallery entrance, along the Bow Heritage Trail). [7] CHN Veneers specialised in the production of wood veneer, expanding during the Second World War to cockpit veneers and propeller production for RAF aeroplanes including Spitfires. The letters C, H and N are visible as inlaid brickwork on the exterior façade of the building, which can be seen from the Grove Road bridge, spanning the Hertford Union canal. These letters, which might be conflated with the prominent consonants in “Chisenhale,” actually refer to the aforementioned CHN Veneers.
After the factory’s closure in 1972, the building was for some years unoccupied. [8] The adjacent building, previously used as a brewery warehouse, remains derelict today. In 1980, a group of artists, evicted from their Thames-side studio spaces by property developers, negotiated a lease of the building with Tower Hamlets Council under the name “Arts Place Trust.” They proceeded to create studios on the floors upstairs and eventually put on exhibitions in the ground floor space, initially on a for-hire basis. The gallery acknowledges this artist-led history in the statement: “Chisenhale was founded by artists.” [9]
Between 1993 and 1994, under the directorship of Jonathan Watkins, Chisenhale Gallery established its own legal status with the Charities Commission and became a separate entity from Arts Place Trust. The organisation is a registered charity and one of Arts Council England's National Portfolio Organisations. [10]
Before the separation from Arts Place Trust, there were three consecutive acting Gallery Managers: David Thorp (1986-1987), Emma Dexter (1987-1990) and the aforementioned Jonathan Watkins (1990-1995), who became Director of Chisenhale Gallery with the establishment of Chisenhale Gallery as an independent charity. [11] Since, seven people have held the position of director of Chisenhale Gallery: Judith Nesbitt (1995-1998), Sue Jones (1998-2000), Tamsin Dillon (2000-2001), John Gill (2001-2003), Simon Wallis (2004-2008), Polly Staple (2008-2019) and Zoé Whitley, the current director of Chisenhale Gallery. [12]
Since the early 1980s, Chisenhale Gallery has gained a reputation for exhibiting UK and internationally-acclaimed artists early in their careers, offering many artists their first UK institutional solo show. [9] The gallery’s present-day Commissions Programme is devised based on curatorial research worldwide, the result of which early to mid-career artists are invited to develop new artwork for public exhibition. The work in question is produced over a one- to two-year incubation period, culminating in an exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery. [13]
Among the artists who have exhibited at Chisenhale Gallery, there have been numerous Turner Prize nominees and several winners, including Rachel Whiteread (1993), [14] Helen Marten (2016), [15] Lubaina Himid (2017), [16] and Lawrence Abu Hamdan (2019), [17] among others. Most recently, of the four artists nominated for the 2023 award, nominees Ghislaine Leung and Rory Pilgrim are both Chisenhale alumni. [18]
As both a non-profit organisation and a registered charity, [19] Chisenhale Gallery’s ongoing programme is entirely funded through trusts, foundations and individuals. [9]
Notable exhibitions that have taken place at Chisenhale Gallery include:
Chisenhale Gallery is a founding member of the small-gallery advocacy group Common Practice, formed in 2009. Today, they are joined by Afterall, Gasworks, Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), LUX, Matt’s Gallery, The Showroom, and Studio Voltaire.
Plus Tate [20] was launched in 2010 with an aim to share art collections and expertise with other UK galleries. The Chisenhale Gallery is one of 34 partners. [21]
How to work together was a partnership programme of contemporary art commissions and research based projects devised by Chisenhale Gallery, The Showroom and Studio Voltaire between 2013 and 2016. The project is supported by Arts Council England's Catalyst Arts grant scheme, [22] Bloomberg, Cockayne Grants for the Arts and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
2.8 Million Minds began as a collaboration between Chisenhale Gallery, Bernie Grant Arts Centre and artist James Ledbitter, also known as ‘the vacuum cleaner’. The project is part of the Mayor of London’s Culture and Creative Industries Unit, funded by Baring Foundation and Thrive LDN as part of Thriving Through Culture. [23] Conceived as a pilot project commissioned by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, 2.8 Million Minds acknowledged London’s population of 2,879,900 children and young people aged 0-25, posing the question: "how can young people use art and culture to create change in their mental health, and how mental health services are funded and delivered?"
Between November 2021 and June 2022, more than 120 young people contributed to A Manifesto for 2.8 Million Minds, a youth-led, artist-centred, and Disability Justice-informed approach to how young Londoners want to use art to begin to radically reimagine mental health support, justice and pride. The manifesto received high commendation from the Culture Health & Wellbeing Alliance's Collective Power Award 2022. [24]
Launched at the Houses of Parliament in June 2022, the manifesto brings together the feelings, artistic processes, and actionable ideas of young people across Haringey and Tower Hamlets with artists Becky Warnock, Simon Tomlinson, Tyreis Holder, and Yomi Sode, challenging how and who makes the decisions in the lives of young people's mental health. The document includes how-to guides, resources and critical reflections.
In 2021, Chisenhale Gallery launched Chisenhale Books, a strand of the organisation’s output dedicated to the production of an artist’s first major publication to accompany their exhibition. The inaugural release, say cheeeeese, was published by Hurtwood Press in Summer 2022 alongside Rachel Jones’ Chisenhale commission of the same name. It included contributions from award-winning poet Anaïs Duplan and MacArthur Fellow Claudia Rankine. The second title in the series, In a Dream You Climb the Stairs, accompanied Nikita Gale’s exhibition, and launched at Frieze London on 15 October 2022. Contributors to Gale’s first book are Pulitzer Prize-winner Hilton Als, conceptual artist Barbara Kruger and academic Dr. Bénédicte Boisseron.
A third title, In Cascades, was released in July 2023 to mark the conclusion of Lotus Laurie Kang’s critically-acclaimed first exhibition in Europe, [25] featuring poet CAConrad. Later that year, Chisenhale Books co-published Slumber Party with Mousse Publishing to coincide with Benoît Piéron's exhibition of the same name in November 2023, featuring contributions from Clay AD, Olivia Aherne, Paul Maheke, Roxanne Maillet, Benoît Piéron and Zoé Whitley.
Most recently, Chisenhale Books released a second publication in partnership with Mousse Publishing titled The Process, written by artist Joshua Leon alongside his Chisenhale show, The Missing O and E. Released in May 2024, the text includes a piece of original writing by Leon, an essay by the exhibition’s curators Olivia Aherne and Amy Jones, and an afterword by Zoé Whitley.
The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible. The prize is awarded at Tate Britain every other year, with various venues outside of London being used in alternate years. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the UK's most publicised art award. The award represents all media.
Dame Rachel Whiteread is an English artist who primarily produces sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She was the first woman to win the annual Turner Prize in 1993.
The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.
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Maud Sulter was a Scottish contemporary fine artist, photographer, writer, educator, feminist, cultural historian, and curator of Ghanaian heritage. She began her career as a writer and poet, becoming a visual artist not long afterwards. By the end of 1985 she had shown her artwork in three exhibitions and her first collection of poetry had been published. Sulter was known for her collaborations with other Black feminist scholars and activists, capturing the lives of Black people in Europe. She was a champion of the African-American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, and was fascinated by the Haitian-born French performer Jeanne Duval.
House was a temporary public sculpture by British artist Rachel Whiteread, on Grove Road, Mile End, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It was completed on 25 October 1993 and demolished eleven weeks later on 11 January 1994. The work won Whiteread the Turner Prize for best young British artist and the K Foundation art award for the worst British artist in November 1993.
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Zoé Whitley is an American art historian and curator who has been director of Chisenhale Gallery since 2020. Based in London, she has held curatorial positions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Tate galleries, and the Hayward Gallery. At the Tate galleries, Whitley co-curated the 2017 exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which ARTnews called one of the most important art exhibitions of the 2010s. Soon after she was chosen to organise the British pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale.
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