Book launch of Artwork as Institution. Stephen Willats

For the first time, the publication “Artwork as Institution. Stephen Willats” edited by Institution as a Way of Life researcher Lucie Kolb brings together the Mosaic works by the British artist Stephen Willats, which were created in Great Britain and Finland in the 1990s. In his Mosaic works, Willats uses the medium of the book to enter into an exchange with people and to create a space in neighborhoods, museums, and bookstores where social bonds can be established. It is a collaborative process through which Willats redefines the web of relationships between artist, artwork, audience and society; a process of instituting in which the artwork becomes its own institution. Stephen Willats will be showing documentary material on the Mosaic works from his archive exclusively for the book launch.
Prior to this, a seminar with Stephen Willats will take place in the afternoon at the F+F School of Art and Design looking at the beginnings of Willats’ artistic practice as an autodidact in London at the end of the 1950s. Today, his photo-text works, diagrams, and collages are particularly well known. These are usually created in direct connection with the processes Willats investigates when he works for a certain period of time with people from a neighborhood, a high-rise housing estate, or a club. The seminar is organized and led by the guest_*talks team with Aurora Corrado, Gökçe Ergör, Daniel Hauser, Mirjam Hurschler, Deliah Keller, Hamed Rashtian, Mélanie Savelkouls and Seraina Stefania.
On May 24, Stephen Willats opens the exhibition “Languages of Dissent” at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst. The exhibition provides a comprehensive insight into Willats’ artistic work since the 1960s. (Stephen Willats, Languages of Dissent, 25 May – 18 August 2019).