Collection: Stephen Willats

Stephen Willats (born 1943) is a British artist whose practice since the early 1960s has centred on communication, participation and the social systems through which people construct meaning and identity. Working with residents of housing estates, urban communities and social institutions, Willats developed a practice that used diagrams, questionnaires, photographs and text to map the relationships between individuals and their environments. His work challenged the conventional boundaries between artist, artwork and audience, proposing instead a model of art as a form of social research and exchange. He founded the journal Control in 1965, which became an important vehicle for ideas about cybernetics, systems theory and participatory practice. Willats’s work has been consistently ahead of the institutional frameworks available to receive it, and his influence on socially engaged and participatory art practice has been substantial.