| Dates: | born 1943
| | Biography: | 1943 Born in London.
Lives and works in London
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1995- Living Together, Tramway, Glasgow
1993-Buildings & People, Berlinsche
Galerie, Berlin
1982- Meta Filter and Related Works,
Tate Gallery, London
1979-80- Concerning Our Present Way of
Living, Whitechapel Art Gallery,
London;
Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1998 Addressing the Century: 100 Years
of
Art & Fashion, Hayward Gallery, London
1988 100 Years of British Art, Leeds
City Art Gallery, Leeds
1985 Sculpture Alternatives: Aspects of
Photography and Sculpture in Britain
1965-82, Tate Gallery, London
The British Show, National Art Gallery,
Wellington; The Art Gallery of New
South Wales, Sydney (and toured
Australia)
1983 New Art at the Tate Gallery, Tate
Gallery, London
1982 La Biennale di Venezia, Venice
1981 Sculpture in the Twentieth Century,
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London
1977 10e Biennale de Paris,
Manifestation Internationale des Jeune
Artistes, Paris
1975 Structures and Codes, Royal
College of Art Gallery, London
1974 Art as Thought Process,
Serpentine Gallery, London
FURTHER READING
Building and People (exh. cat.),
Berlinsche Galerie, Berlin 1993
City of Concrete (exh. cat.), Ikon
Gallery, Birmingham 1986
Living Together (exh. cat.), Tramway,
Glasgow 1995
Stephen Willats, Three Essays (exh.
cat.), ICA,
London and The Mappin Art Gallery,
Sheffield 1986
Walker, J. "Meta Filter" (Interview with
Stephen Willats), Studio International
190.977 (Sep. 1975) | | | Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | | Date of source: | 1999 |
|
| | Personal Profile: | Artist's Statement:
Democratic Journey is an expression of
the basic consensus between people in
the process of creating a society and in
its externalisation as culture. As a
simulation of this process, the work
evolves over time through people's direct
participation. The transience, fluidity and
random-ness of people's encounters
with the infrastructure of society -
the 'reality' that governs their daily
lives -
is manifest in this work as a sequence of
interpersonal procedures. These
procedures take a group of 32
individuals on a journey, both imaginary
and actual, in which they build a 'society'
between themselves.
The formal structure of the work enables
32 individuals, who have not previously
met, to become one group of 32
members. There are six stages to the
group's evolution, each of which is built
around a participant's response to a
question concerning the 'ideal journey'.
The questions are open: there are no
right or wrong replies, no good or bad
responses. They are simply a way of
externalising and articulating people's
highly personal, implicit visions of their
destiny to themselves and to others. A
dice is thrown before the presentation of
the second question to generate random
pairings of participants and this
procedure is repeated before each
subsequent question, leading to larger
and larger groupings.
The outcome of the work cannot be
known in advance and the participants'
interpretation of what constitutes
the 'ideal journey' is completely relative
to the models held and expressed by the
32 participants. However the structure of
the work, from the individual towards
progressively larger groups, ensures that
participants will interact with each other
and at some undetermined level
influence each other's perceptual models
in the drive towards consensus. The
work is neither analysed nor edited: after
the completion of Journey Question six
the group disbands.
| | Description Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | Description Source Date: | 1999 | | Gender: | male | | Type: | person |
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