OPEN STUDIOS 2026

OCTOBER

FRIDAY 2: 6- 9 PM

SATURDAY 3: 12- 5 PM

SUNDAY 4: 12- 5 PM

Chisenhale Studios is pleased to invite you to our annual Open Studios.

Open Studios is a highlight of our year, bringing together 40 studios and 45+ artists working across a wide range of artistic disciplines and practices.

In our 46th year, Chisenhale Studios continues a long-standing legacy of supporting artists and providing space for experimentation, exchange and the development of diverse artistic practices. Open Studios offers an opportunity to experience this community first-hand, opening the studios to the public and inviting visitors to meet artists, explore their work and discover the range of practices taking place within our building.

This year’s Open Studios will also feature a curated moving image and performance programme, curated by Léo Krenzer, running throughout the weekend. The moving image programme brings together an eclectic selection of artist films, both in form and content; from grainy, textured works to high-production shorts, with abstract, humorous and DIY approaches sitting alongside one another. The programme explores personal and political perspectives, ranging from urgent voices to more metaphysical reflections.

Rather than presenting each artist separately, their works are brought together through five thematic strands: Human, Otherwise, Symbiotic Relationships, System Failure, Terms & Conditions and Panopticon. Together, they explore our relationships with one another, our environments, and the social and political systems we inhabit.

Some works have been distilled from repeating loops into more structured pieces, allowing multiple artists’ films to be experienced together in a single sitting. See the full programme and schedule below.

Additionally, as part of the Chisenhale Art Place Community Events programme, we will be hosting Family Morning on Saturday 3 October, 10 am–12 pm, offering a relaxed time for families to enjoy the studios together, with family-focused activities taking place throughout the morning.

Everyone is welcome to attend Open Studios at any time over the weekend.

We look forward to welcoming you to Chisenhale Studios and celebrating 46 years of artists, studios, community and creative practice.

Chisenhale Studio Artists:

Henrietta Armstrong, John Peter Askew, Marta Bakst, David Blackmore, David Buckley, Caroline Burgess, Matt Calderwood, Maya Gurung-Russell Campbell, Edward Chell, Nic Cheveldave, KP Culver, Sean Dawson, Kevin Dunbar, Mark Fairnington, Jame St Findlay, John Fuller, Jon George, Joy Girvin, Kate Hardy, Kevin Harrison, Kirsty Harris, Sam Hodge, Jeremy Hutchison, Nicholas Johnson, Malcolm Jones, Ingrid Kerma, Akinsola Lawson, Gabby Laurent, Richard Layzell, Jack Lovell, Nadine Mahoney, Richard Maloney, Diane Martin, Lee Maelzer, Kumbirai Makumbe, Charlotte Mew, Edwin Mingard, Vincent Milne, Alicia Paz, Monika Oechsler, Nigel O'Neill, Andy Ridley, Hilary Rosen, Karen Russo, Aycin Sahin, Will Sheridan Jr, Jo Stockham, Diana Taylor, Giles Thackway, Amikam Toren, Daniel Turner, Sarah Kate Wilson, Eray Yilmaz

Text by curator Léo Krenzer

Open Studios is a chance to step inside Chisenhale and discover some of the work being made here. It offers a rare opportunity to enter artists’ working spaces, encounter ideas and projects at different stages of development, and get a sense of the many different practices that coexist within the building. 

All of the artists featured in this programme currently hold studio spaces at Chisenhale. This year, a specially devised programme by film curator Léo Krenzer, opens another window into the studios, bringing together artists within the community who work with moving image and performance. Rather than presenting each artist separately, their works have been gathered into thematic strands, creating conversations between practices that might not usually be seen alongside one another. Across Human, Otherwise, Symbiotic Relationships, System Failure, Terms & Conditions and Panopticon, connections emerge around our relationships with one another, our environments, and the social and political systems we inhabit.

Human, Otherwise brings Karen Russo and Monika Oechsler into conversation, pairing Russo’s Sinkholes with Oechsler’s Address to the Audience: A Prelude and The Eagle Dance (after Marcel Broodthaers). Their works offer different ways of thinking about our relationship to the world around us and the boundaries between the human and everything that exists beyond it.

This sense of connection continues in Symbiotic Relationships, which brings Lee Maelzer’s The View together with a selection of works by Kirsty Harris. The title also captures something at the heart of the programme itself: the idea that placing works alongside one another can change how we see them. Sometimes the connections are immediate; elsewhere, they reveal themselves gradually, as one image, idea or gesture begins to echo another.

Other strands look more closely at the systems that shape contemporary life. System Failure presents Edwin Mingard’s H is for Hostile Environment, while Terms & Conditions brings together Jeremy Hutchison’s The Never Never, Dead White Man and Dear Mr Zuckerberg. These works invite us to think about structures of power and the ways political and social systems filter into everyday experience. Panopticon, featuring Amikam Toren’s Carrots, adds another perspective to these questions, turning our attention towards looking, observation and visibility.

The programme also moves beyond the screen with Richard Layzell’s live performance, La Busqueda - the Spanish Search, introducing the spontaneity of a live encounter into the programme.

Above all, this programme is an invitation to explore. Open Studios gives us the chance to see what is happening behind Chisenhale’s doors; this moving-image programme offers another way in. It brings together just some of the artists working with film, video and performance here, allowing their works to meet, overlap and occasionally rub against one another. We hope audiences will discover individual artists and their practices, but also enjoy the unexpected connections that appear when works made by neighbours are brought together in the same room.

Access

Chisenhale Studios is based across 4 floors, with regrettably only the education room having step-free access.

We want events at Chisenhale to be accessible for all, and for everyone to feel welcome and included at our events. We acknowledge the limitations of the building we are in, and would be happy to discuss any ways that we can help you access our activities.

If you would like to discuss your visit, please email ellie@chisenhale.co.uk