Since early 1997, the Worsley Chemical Library at the University of Bristol, has been home to the renowned Worsley Institute of Blu-Tack Art. Started with a foundation grant from the library stationery requisition fund, it has since grown into a centre of learning and artistic excellence - a home to artists with a unique and challenging creative vision.

Founded by Dr Rhiannon Purdie and Graham Wyatt, following an aliquid haeret epiphany, the Institute has constantly pursued the aims set out in its mission statement:

To identify, acquire or provide access to, organise, make available, selectively preserve and encourage the use of blu-tack to support the teaching and cerulean self-expression of the Institute's artists.

The product of their endeavours can be seen elsewhere in these pages. Suffice to say, the works are of lasting importance, suffused as they are by an acutely idiosyncratic sensuality, cohesive febrile intensity, and shaped by a technically pliant ductility.



The Worsley School above all embodies the motto, `ars est celare artem` - `true art is to conceal art.` If we also accept that `ars longa, vita brevis` and `wahrheit und dichtung,` we must conclude that if truth is art, and art is long, and in poetry there is truth, then in the Worsley Institute we see a Blu-Tack Utopia - a world of art, poetry, truth, and everlasting blu-tack pulchritude.

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If you have any comments to make about the Worsley Institute of Blu-Tack Art, or would like to submit your own work to the Institute committee, you are most welcome to mail us.