Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962-69
23 January to 30 March 2014
This is the first survey of work by Stephen Willats from the sixties. Willats (born and lives in London) was introduced to art as a teenage gallery assistant in 1958 and by 1962 was producing advanced artwork. He embraced the transdisciplinarity of the time, juggling the roles of social scientist, engineer, designer and artist, and developed an art about social interaction, using models derived from cybernetics, the hybrid post-war science of communication.
As well as the clothing and furniture made in 1965 when he briefly described himself as a 'conceptual designer', Willats' earliest sculptural series of 'Manual Variables' is haptic and interactive. These are shown alongside early issues of Control, the still-operating magazine he founded in the same period. Its title is a provocation, invoking the cybernetic idea that people can take control of their environments, thereby deflecting the controls of a dominant hierarchy.
In 1968 Willats made an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Oxford in which he presented constructions involving movement and light – some wall-mounted, others large-scale environments – that were informed by his interest in contemporary theories: about probability and prediction, behavioural science, subliminal advertising, and colour in relation to motivation and learning. The display of these at Raven Row will be based on the darkened maze in which they were installed at Oxford, where they were proposed as experimental stimuli for 'states of consciousness'.
Willats' works on paper from this period elegantly combine cybernetic modelling, architectural graphics and constructivist geometries, and are consistent with his practice of today. However, he abandoned his dynamic constructions at the end of the sixties in pursuit of an art of social interaction beyond gallery and art object, for which he became well-known. This exhibition reconvenes this earlier work for the first time.
The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated publication, with texts by Antony Hudek, Emily Pethick, Christabel Stewart and Andrew Wilson. It is curated by Alex Sainsbury.
Selected texts
Events
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Control magazine. Issues 1–5
Archive of Control; Private collection; Chelsea College of Arts Library, University of the Arts London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Foreground left:
Architectural Exercise in Colour and Form No. 1, 1962
Private collection
Foreground right:
Maze Drawing No. 2, 1967
Jane Kelly, London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Left to right:
Area Development Drawing No. 1A, 1965
Unit Drawing No. 6, 1965
Architectural Structure in Colour and Form, 1962
Drawing for a Project No. 18, 1966
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London; Collection of the artist; Jane Kelly, London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Left to right:
Area Development No. 10, 1966
Area Development Drawing No. 8, 1965
Collection Nicholas Logsdail; Paul C. Caffell
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Visual Automatic No. 1, 1964–5
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Visual Automatic No. 2, 1965
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Right:
Visual Automatic No. 2, 1965
Background:
Visual Field Automatic No. 1, 1964
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London; Tate: Purchased from funds provided by the Knapping Fund 2004
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Shift Box No. 1, 1964
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Foreground left:
Visual Automatic No. 4, 1965
Collection Nicholas Logsdail
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Left:
Visual Automatic No. 5, 1965
Right:
Visual Automatic No. 4, 1965
Tate. Purchased from funds provided by the Knapping Fund 2004; Collection Nicholas Logsdail
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Visual Automatic No. 5, 1965
Tate. Purchased from funds provided by the Knapping Fund 2004
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Visual Transmitter No. 1, 1965–66
Private collection, London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Visual Transmitter No. 2, 1968
Private collection, London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Left to right:
Variable Sheets, 1965
Design for a Helmet, [two drawings], 1965
Victoria and Albert Museum
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Optical Shift Drawing No. 1, Series 1, 1963
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Left to right:
Manual Variable No. 2, 1963
Optical Shift Construction, 1964
Manual Variable No. 1, 1963
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London; Private collection, Düsseldorf
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Environmental Box, 1962/2014
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Foreground:
Colour Variable No. 3, 1963
Private collection, Bremen, Germany
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Variable Shift Machine No. 1, 1963
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view
Control. Stephen Willats. Work 1962–69
Photograph by Marcus J. Leith