Stephen Willats

This diagrammatic work on paper shows us photographs of people as couples in relation to four developing sources of information and the increasing complexity of the information we receive from many different channels.

The process is shown as almost circular and continuous, as we move from simpler frameworks within the world as we see it, towards the more and more complex world we can imagine. The diagram concerns the way in which ideas and concepts, especially those that are tangential to our pre-existing values and beliefs, can be brought together into new insights.

Willats described it thus: ‘Ultimately, I’m interested in the idea that reality is a construction of ourselves, that we build it and we create the reality we want in our life. There’s no real one way of viewing reality.’

Stephen Willats, Person to Person, People to People, Milton Keynes Gallery, 2007