The Area Development Drawings are works in which Willats adopted the redu­ced language of diagrams to simplify complex correlations and to convey dynamic relation­ships within social networks. In Willats’ practice, diagrams do not serve as explanations, but rather as a way of seeing and changing ways of seeing. As speculative tools for mapping systems, they have the potential to describe social relationships and to offer new philosophical, social and ideological visions. He uses them to visualise and conceptualise our social reality, transforming in these early works constructivist geometries through his understanding of analytic models and the diagrammatic approaches of, among others, cybernetics and systems theory.

Stephen Willats was born in 1943 in London, where he continues to live and work. Recent solo institutional exhibitions include Languages of Dissent at Migros Museum, Zürich (2019). His work has also recently been featured in the Chicago Architecture Biennial (2019– 2020), Still Undead: Popular Culture in Britain Beyond the Bauhaus at Nottingham Contemporary (2019–2020), Pushing Paper: Contemporary Drawing from 1970 to Now at the British Museum (2019–2020), Objects of Wonder, British Sculpture 1950s–Present, featuring works from the Tate collection, at the PalaisPopulaire, Berlin (2019).