Edward Gillman has been appointed director of the the influential east London area, Chisenhale Gallery, changing Zoé Whitley who stepped down final yr. Gillman was the director of the non-profit establishment Auto Italia in London from 2019 to 2024.
On this new function, Gillman will oversee the Social Follow tasks which, in line with the gallery’s web site, “helps artists to create new work via collaborative processes”. The native a part of the programme focuses on working with younger individuals who expertise boundaries to accessing artwork and tradition, putting artists in hospitals, youngster and adolescent psychological well being companies, and various provision contexts throughout East London.
He can even lead the Commissions Programme, which encompasses three new exhibitions this yr by Claudia Pagès Rabal (till 11 Could), Dan Guthrie and Grant Mooney.
Gillman left his earlier function at Auto Italia in April final yr. Positioned within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the area is “devoted to researching, producing and exhibiting work on the intersections of queer research and social change”, says the establishment web site.
Since 2017, Auto Italia has commissioned 103 artists—together with Adjoa Armah, Elysia Crampton Chuquimia and Sin Wai Kin—and offered 26 exhibitions. The 2018 survey of works by the Aids activists Gran Fury included works produced between 1987 and 1995, akin to their set up The Pope and the Penis (1990). In 2023, Barbarella’s Kiss at Auto Italia, surveyed the work of the Bolivian artist and queer activist David Aruquipa Pérez.
In an announcement, Auto Italia mentioned: “Underneath [Gillman’s] management, Auto Italia has commissioned artists from various disciplines, geographies and subjectivities, participating audiences with new discourses on the relationships between identification, sexuality and place.”
