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.

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.

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.

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).

[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.

[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.

[9] Running parallel to their commissions, Chisenhale Gallery also facilitates a long-standing Social Practice programme which aims to “incubate new ideas about the role of art in the life of a community”, as per their website.

As part of their “Art Making in Unstable Contexts” programme, in 2023 Chisenhale Gallery began a collaboration with London East Alternative Provision, a local Pupil Referral Unit, to “explore the practice of teaching art in PRUs and the potential impact of involving professional artists in these classrooms for both teachers and students.” The gallery works regularly with artists to lead workshops with students from the neighbouring Chisenhale Primary School, culminating in the production of multiple publications and other creative outcomes over the last few years.

[28] 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.

2.8 Million Minds began as a collaboration between Chisenhale Gallery, Bernie Grant Arts Centre and artist James Leadbitter, also known as ‘the vacuum cleaner’.