NTU continues to document Nottingham’s art history by acquiring two new pieces by famous artist

Stephen Willats is a pioneer of early conceptual art and has become one of the most significant and influential artists of the past 50 years.

Throughout his career, he has concentrated on ideas surrounding communication and social engagement and has initiated many seminal multi-media art projects.

In the early 1970s, the period from which the two pieces of artwork were produced, Stephen Willats was living in Nottingham and leading a radical and forward-thinking teaching programme within the Fine Art department at Nottingham College of Art and Design, which is now NTU’s Nottingham School of Art & Design.

The first piece of art which will be added to the NTU collection is Art and Cognition Manifesto (1969) which Stephen produced and printed in the Bonington building which is still part of NTU’s City Campus today.

This silkscreen on poster paper piece continued a tradition of manifesto writing that Stephen had begun around this time attempting to shape the thinking of the art community.

The second piece of work which NTU has acquired is The Telephone Conversation (1974), a collection of photographic prints, paint, typewriter text and ink on card.

The work concerns the relativity of people’s perceptions of each other and was very much informed by the ideas Stephen had whilst exploring Nottingham, even including several people associated with his time working at Nottingham College of Art and Design.

Alongside these two pieces of art, NTU has also purchased five issues of Control Magazine (Which Stephen was the Founder and Editor of) to exhibit. Control Magazine’s function was to provide a resource to artists to discuss their work and to make connections with other disciplines such as Social Sciences and Computer Sciences.

All of the pieces of Stephen Willats’ work that the University have acquired are displayed in the Bonington Gallery Foyer at NTU.

The NTU Art Collection is a permanent collection that comprises of more than 400 works of visual art, sculpture and craft that have been acquired through purchase, gift and bequest. It reflects the history that has shaped the University and provides a unique window into the development of the visual arts in both the University and Nottingham.

Works from the NTU Art Collection are distributed across three of the four campuses (City, Clifton and Brackenhurst) in academic schools, libraries and throughout the University’s main buildings.

Joshua Lockwood-Moran, Assistant Curator at Nottingham Trent University’s Bonington Gallery said: “The two new acquisitions for the NTU Art Collection are really significant; they demonstrate early examples of Stephen’s approach to art making and thinking, which he developed while working for Nottingham College of Art and Design.

“Knowing that he made the editions of the Art and Cognition Manifesto (1969) at the Bonington building is the perfect context for the artwork to be bought for the collection. It was great to have welcomed Stephen back to Nottingham to work with him on the current exhibition at Bonington Gallery.”

Stephen Willats Social Resource Project For Tennis Clubs exhibition is currently being held at Bonington Gallery until the 10^th December. More information can be found here.