Stephen Willats: Human Right book launch

The launch of Stephen Willats' new book, HUMAN RIGHT, which accompanies the artist's current exhibition at Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art, will take place on Thursday 4 May, 6-8pm, at Claire de Rouen Books, 1st floor, 125 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0EW. All welcome.

For six decades, Willats has concentrated on ideas that today are ever-present in contemporary art: communication, social engagement, active spectatorship, and self-organisation, and has initiated many seminal multi-media art projects everywhere from tennis clubs and public galleries to inner city housing estates. Outside of the norms and conventions of an object-based art world, Willats has developed work which reacts against what he sees as the historical determinism within art. Rather than presenting visitors with icons of certainty he creates a random, complex environment which stimulates visitors to engage in their own creative process rather than merely submitting to passive observation.

The exhibition at Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art (until 4 June 2017) examines the relationship between personal narratives and social conditions and includes a newly commissioned project that, six months in the making, features four local people who have transformed their own situation and that of the community around them.

See a preview of a new film by Stephen Willats, on display as part of his exhibition at Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art.

Read more about Stephen Willats: Human Right