The Institute Visitors' book


Since opening the Worsley Institute of Blu-Tack Art to the public through the realm electronique, the Institute has received plaudits from a number of particularly acute visitors. These visitors have included members of the national press, who have most kindly signalled their approbation by conferring upon us a number of laudatory reviews (see The Observer - 24th August 1997, The Independent - 28th August 1997, The Times - 30th August 1997), that modesty and copyright law forbid us from repeating here.

However we would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the support and love that you have given us, and hereby reproduce a fragrant nosegay of the letters that have been sent to us. We have selected letters that may be of use to future students of the Institute's work, having in common an analytical perspecuity and discriminating sensitivity that are much in accordance with the Artists' own views.

Yours with the greatest possible love and affection,
Graham Wyatt, Dr Rhiannon Purdie, and visiting Artist, Sian James.




The eternal beauty of your blu-tack creations is a fantastic outcry against the ephemeral nature of modern art. We were overcome with admiration at your ground-breaking achievements.

Yours Alf and Lotte Gjertsen

[Following a letter of thanks from the Institute, Mr Gjertsen replied...]

I realise the significance of appreciation when one is isolated through genius, and that is why I wish to re-confirm my sincere admiration of your fantastic achievement. The plethora of artistic ability encompassed in your creations is unparalleled, and the succinct and poetic explanations of their significance is an inspiration to artists throughout the world. A light is shining in the darkness of conventionality, your work is of unconceivable importance to the human race. Do not hesitate to continue your pursuit of rejecting the mundane, allowing pure imagination to flow forth unchecked by prejudice. Your work will unite mankind.

Yours with sincere appreciation and love,
A. Gjertsen



Your Blu-Tack Catalogue is wonderful. I especially found "Cerulean Primate" to be an incredibly moving statement of impotent self alienation and isolation, perhaps reaching the terminal vision that Beckettian masterpieces have achieved. Everything seems so clear to me now.

Is it possible that Dr. Purdie would accept an application for a lifelong apprenticeship?

Forever a Blu-Tack disciple,
Kurt Baumgartner



I would like to add a piece of Blu-Tack art to the contemporary collection at the Newlyn Gallery in Cornwall. No, I would like you to have an exhibition there. You would find yourselves amidst kindred spirits I think...

...A.H., not the curator of Newlyn Art Gallery.



A charming and lasting testament to the need to create and the urge, felt all too rarely in these Creuzfeld-Jacobian days that usher in the end of the millenia, to empower oneself and make one's mark. These exhibits call from the depths of human evolution... Beautiful, beautiful.

Paul White



I found the blu-tack art mostly enjoyable but the T-Rex exhibit was strangely unsatisfying. A T-rex does not have dorsal plates and the ratio of front to back leg lengths was completely wrong - the T-Rex you portray seems to have front legs nearly as long as its hind legs. I realise this maybe a stability problem with the medium you work with but the artist has to learn to work within his medium. For example, it is well know that Michelangelo long yearned to sculpt a Stegosaurus from a single block of marble but the plates kept breaking off...

I hope you don't mind this criticism of your otherwise excellent work.

Richard G. Clegg

[Following a reply from the Artist, parts of which are quoted in italics below, Mr Clegg responded as follows]

I don't mind the criticism at all. However I am afraid to say that you have taken too hasty and linear a hermeneutical approach in your critique. Yes, of course the T-Rex does not bear the dorsal plates as you so correctly point out. How typical though, for a mathematician, to fail to see beyond the empirical reality to the ART and the CONCEPT. Loathe as I am to aid interpretation of my work (I had always hoped that it could speak to the masses, i.e. you, itself), however I can see that you are in need of a friendly signpost pointing you in the right direction.

Well, for what it's worth, my opinion is that the "meaning" of a piece of art comes both from the interaction of the artist and his audience - rather than your, if I may say, somewhat crude model of artistic "understanding art" and audience "lack of understanding". Meaning comes from a consensus between the active artist and the passive viewer.

First, just because a work is called T-Rex, why do you (falsely) assume that this means the work is meant to represent a T-Rex? Do you not see that by the contrary title, the work is already imbued with an ambiguity and intrinsic conflict - a conflict that indeed mirrors the unknown but devastating end of the dinosaurs themselves?

I understand what you are saying here, but it is somewhat undermined by the fact that the piece so closely resembles a T-Rex that without the insight provided here in conversation with the author then the perception of the audience is most likely to be that the artist is labouring under a false impression of what, in reality, a T-Rex really was.

Second, by transforming the proportions and shape of that creature commonly known as T-Rex, I am continuing a tradition stretching back to the earliest cave art, through the flattery of 18th century portraiture, to the 20th Century surrealists. Except in my case I am transforming this `tradition' giving it a viable and meaningful CONCEPTUAL voice for the millennial zeitgeist.

I hope this has made things clear to you.

Of course I am certainly familiar with non-representational art as in, for example, your own work "Fishy" but the "near representational" nature of the work T-Rex I feel merely serves to confuse the audience as to the artists true intent. The audience has no way of knowing whether your representation is intended just as that, a representation or whether the deviations from reality are intentional (and I hope you will accept my apologies for considering the former). Contrast this with the elegance and eloquence of your piece, Brontosaurus, where the ponderous, lumpen nature of the medium mirrors so well the _reality_ of the creature. As I said earlier, to my mind, the piece, T Rex was unsatisfying, or at least without the presence of your explanatory note (above) it was. Now, I feel I understand the work better but it is only with the benefit of conversation with you, the sculptor. Perhaps the somewhat terse explanatory notes accompanying the work could be expanded to clarify for the audience since I sense I am not alone in having felt disappointment and bafflement - it is in no sense against art for explanatory notes to accompany as a part of the piece - after all, T.S. Eliot only ever intended The Wasteland to be read in the presence of his footnotes and I think your "T Rex" would be well served by such an inclusion. After all, the themes of transformation and, to some extent the theme of "loss of meaning" (which I seem to see in your sculpture) shows it has a lot in common with Eliot's masterpiece.

Please think more deeply before making any rash criticisms of my work. Artists do not make mistakes - they transform perceptions through challenging received wisdom.

Accepted, artists do not make mistakes, but of course some are better at transforming perceptions than others. I hope you will take this criticism in the way it was intended - as a friendly reminder that the viewer cannot always know the mind of the sculptor and, at times, this lack of clarity can rob a piece of art of its true significance.

Yours,
Richard.



Many thanks also to the following people for their kind messages of congratulation...

Clive Higgon, EMAP Publishing on-line, Alan Tucker, Tracy Lightfoot, Dey Alexander and Will Trumble.




Unfortunately, not all the mail the Institute receives displays such conspicuous acumen.

In the interests of balance, the editors have decided to include the following letters from the Van der Loop family of Amsterdam. It would of course be inappropriate for the editors to suggest that the following misguided diatribe was in any way symptomatic or indeed axiomatic of an exigency of critical perspicacity of the Dutch people as a whole.



I came upon your so called "Worsley Institute of Blu-Tack Art", pleasantly surprised and hoping to be enlightened, uplifted and supported. The words SHOCK and HORROR do not adequately convey my reactions upon realizing you are only pretending to defend, propagate and promote the image, value, indeed the intrinsic idealism of the blu-tack proper.

Undergraduate humour can only undermine the barely nascent awareness and appreciation of B.T. which the discerning mind has been able to perceive towards the end of this, our century. Not having proof of the opposite, I assume for now that you are well-meaning, though misguided, and appeal to you to stop your publication as of tomorrow. Finish your studies, marry a nice girl or whatever, and leave the humble but oh so precious blu-tack alone.

Yours faithfully,
Nol van der Loop



[Due to a regrettable editor's error, Mr van der Loop was thanked in the visitor's book, for his `kind message of congratulation.` This provoked the following response...]

Dear Sir, Madam

I am writing this letter on behalf of my father, who is confined to his hospital bed in a state of intense shock and sadness. He therefore quite obviously can't come to the keyboard himself, as they say.

This week I found my father lying on the floor of his study, unconscious and foaming at the mouth. Looking up at his monitor, I noticed he had been browsing your website, specifically the Institute Visitors Book. At the time I didn't pay any further attention to this, something I would later bitterly regret. Had I known then what I know now, I would have undertaken stronger preventative action, to perhaps spare others the grief with which we are now trying to cope.

When he started coming out of his coma, something the doctors had told me would be unlikely at best, the only thing he could say was: "how dare they?" Of course none of us understood the gravity of those words. Later, when he and I were alone together, he managed - by using techniques learned from playing years of charades - to explain to me the reason for his attack.

After visiting your website for the very first time, he had felt the urge to write to you to express his, and I quote, "shock and horror upon realizing that you are only pretending to defend, propagate and promote the image, value, indeed the intrinsic idealism of the blu-tack proper." My father has been a loyal and devoted Blu-tack fan for as long as I can remember. His initial joy at having found kindred spirits on the Net was overwhelming.

Discovering that you were only using the Blu-tack name to ridicule and disgrace such a unique and precious product, which has brought comfort and support to so many people all over the world, has led to intense emotional pain and suffering on my father's part. I dare say he is not the only one reacting to your scorn in this manner.

In an attempt to explain to you people the depth of his feelings and perhaps even show you the error of your ways, he took the trouble to send you an e-mail, which is something of a challenge to him, since he has effectively no control of his hands, due to a severe case of Blutackiosis. But I digress. In his message to you, he, and I quote once more, wrote: "Undergraduate humour can only undermine the barely nascent awareness and appreciation of B.T. which the discerning mind has been able to perceive towards the end of this, our century. Not having proof of the opposite, I assume for now that you are well-meaning, though misguided, and appeal to you to stop your publication as of tomorrow."

He even included the same advise he'd given to my brother when he moved out of the house after his 49th birthday. "Finish your studies, marry a nice girl or whatever, and leave the humble but oh so precious blu-tack alone." You might still be unsure as to how this could have led to such a tragedy.

The reason is quite simple.
After having sent his message - at your invitation, I might add - he browsed your Institute Visitors Book yet again, to see if it had been received in the manner he had hoped for. Imagine his surprise to find this message at the bottom of the page:

"Many thanks also to the following people for their kind messages of congratulation... Clive Higgon, Nol van der Loop, EMAP Publishing on-line, Alan Tucker, Tracy Lightfoot, Dey Alexander and Will Trumble."

This is of course what he was referring to in hospital when he, gasping for breath, managed to mumble his by now famous words, "how dare they?" You refer to his heart-wrenching plea with a "thank you for your kind message of congratulation...."
What kind of people are you anyway?
Have you no heart?
Is there no room for compassion in this, our world?

I hope and pray that you are indeed merely well-meaning, though misguided, because it would be simple unbearable to contemplate the possibility that there are people out there who would have no qualms about breaking other peoples hearts just to have a quick, cheap laugh at the expense of Blu-tack (which incidently cannot even defend itself - it has to rely on people like my father to be brave and selfless enough to come to its aid). Find it in yourselves to take this message to heart and clean up your act.

Hopefully yours
(don't even think about making a crack at this one, mate!)

Sarah van der Loop, daughter




(If you would like to mail us, please send your post via graham.wyatt@freeuk.com. If you would like to mail any of the other artists, please post to this address, and your mail will be forwarded accordingly)