“All art is a product of society, of relationships between people in which it is quite clear that the most important element in the network between the artist and society is the audience. For without two people there can be no work of art.”

This book presents a wide selection of interviews and photographs from the collaborations between Willats and residents in the many housing estate projects he makes. The first-hand observations and individual opinions, from the past four decades, record a variety of attitudes and perceptions towards the physical reality of their surroundings. Created outside of the norms and conventions of an object-based art world, the projects in this book, mainly on estates in and around London, but also in Bath, Leeds, Milton Keynes and Oxford, highlight the realities of everyday life in both tower blocks and low-rise planned housing. Willats’ work, based on open agreement, transforms peoples’ perceptions of a deterministic culture of objects and monuments, into the possibilities, and rich complexity, inherent in the community between people.

Over 500 black and white photographs.