Stephen Willats

Selected Texts

Practice in the Art Museum, 2001

Extracted from: Stephen Willats, Multichannel Workshop – Practice in the Art Museum, Control Magazine Issue 16, 2001

This text considers the institutional reality in which contemporary art predominately exists, a realm of art museums, art journals, art schools, art collectors etc., and proposes an alternative, more mutual social practice for art.

A State of Agreement, 1976

Adapted from: Life Codes and Behaviour Parameters, Stephen Willats, Nottingham 1976

Written in 1976, this text was published by Midland Group Nottingham for the exhibition, Life Codes and Behaviour Parameters. The text focuses on externalising the purpose and meaning of art practice, seeing art as a an integral and positive agent within society.

Life Codes - Behaviour Parameters, 1974

This text looks at the way in which people make decisions concerning their perceptions of other people and discusses Person A, which is illustrated in the Works section

Notice, 1967

This text was produced by Willats in 1967 and forms part of the series of Manifestos he wrote and distributed at the time. It is an early summary of his continuing focus on the audience

Manifesto Text, 1961

The Old Artists

This text is one of a series of brief, typewritten Manifesto Texts produced by Willats in the 1960s and which he distributed by hand. It considers the illusionistic nature of art and the need for it to be on a more realistic basis.

Text archive

2008

2001

1990

1986

1985

1983

1982

1979

1977

1976

1974

1967

1961