Edward Gillman has been appointed director of the the influential east London space, Chisenhale Gallery, replacing Zoé Whitley who stepped down last year. Gillman was the director of the non-profit institution Auto Italia in London from 2019 to 2024.

In this new role, Gillman will oversee the Social Practice projects which, according to the gallery’s website, “supports artists to create new work through collaborative processes”. The local part of the programme focuses on working with young people who experience barriers to accessing art and culture, placing artists in hospitals, child and adolescent mental health services, and alternative provision contexts across East London.

He will also lead the Commissions Programme, which encompasses three new exhibitions this year by Claudia Pagès Rabal (until 11 May), Dan Guthrie and Grant Mooney.

Gillman left his previous role at Auto Italia in April last year. Located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the space is “dedicated to researching, producing and exhibiting work on the intersections of queer studies and social change”, says the institution website.

Since 2017, Auto Italia has commissioned 103 artists—including Adjoa Armah, Elysia Crampton Chuquimia and Sin Wai Kin—and presented 26 exhibitions. The 2018 survey of works by the Aids activists Gran Fury included works produced between 1987 and 1995, such as their installation 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 a statement, Auto Italia said: “Under [Gillman’s] leadership, Auto Italia has commissioned artists from diverse disciplines, geographies and subjectivities, engaging audiences with new discourses on the relationships between identity, sexuality and place.”