Antwerp City Collection

Stephen Willats has produced artworks that engage with social relations and the potential of art as a means to document and interact with people’s lives, often with reference to city architecture. An essential part of his practice has always been the role of drawing and graphic representation to describe complex systems and concepts surrounding the reality of modern life. For Concrete Window, Willats invited three women to participate in the making of this work centred on the environment of their living space – a large housing block at Ernest Claesstraat 12 in Linkeroever (Left Bank of Antwerp), photographically documenting objects they identified as significant. A discussion on these objects and the personal meaning attached to them provided the context for representing their ‘symbolic world’, that we see in the work. Willats made Concrete Window for an exhibition at Annie Gentils gallery in Antwerp in 1991.