Willats was born in London (1943) and studied at Ealing School of Art; he began editing and publishing Control Magazine in 1965 and in 1972–3 was Director of the Centre for Behavioural Art in London. His work of this period explored the realities of living in high rise urban social housing, not as an observer of architecture but of the lives being lived. This work belongs to a group describing The Lurky Place– a large seemingly abandoned area, surrounded by housing estates not far from the centre of Hayes. The local inhabitants, who gave the place its name, regarded ‘the lurky place’ as being outside the norms of society ‘a territory for pursuits which cannot be undertaken within institutional society’

My Yard, British Council 2009