A fitting homage to quirkiest of artists

Once, at a posh exhibition opening, someone karate- chopped me behind the knee and I collapsed on the floor, amid great hilarity. The chopper was revealed as George Wyllie, artist, maverick and, at the time, president of the Society of Scottish Artists.

Setting someone off balance is a convenient metaphor for the way Wyllie approached art. Wyllie, who died in 2012, aged 90, had a long and varied career: in the Second World War he joined the Fleet Air Arm, and later, the Royal Navy, where he saw active service as an electrical artificer on HMS Argonaut. An autodidact and former exciseman, his life and work often focused on the sea, in particular the Inverclyde towns of Gourock and Greenock. He was fiercely proud of the maritime and industrial heritage of the area.

It is entirely fitting that this inaugural exhibition of the centre dedicated to Wyllie’s artistic legacy, designed by the leading architect Richard Murphy, is situated within a stone’s throw of Wyllie’s home and work, with commanding views up and down his beloved Clyde.

The Wyllieum (the name has all the eccentric irony of the man himself) is open, welcoming and democratic — the result of the love and labour of many individuals, who have toiled for years to make this beautiful dream a reality. The Wyllieum shares its premises with a new, dedicated cruise liner terminal. It’s almost comical to imagine hordes of tourists, perhaps on their first encounter with Scotland, coming face to face with one of the country’s most quirky artists.

But one suspects that such an encounter will win over many unaccustomed to the tropes of contemporary art, for Wyllie was that rare thing: he bridged the often gaping chasm between the popular and the elitist art world. His Straw Locomotive, as much a spectacle as artwork, burnt with ire and irony on Finnieston Quay in 1990, an elegy to Glasgow’s industrial past. His Paper Boat wowed the crowds on the Clyde, Thames and Hudson. Hidden beneath the apparent whimsy there were deeper messages. The Wyllieum is a stone’s throw from where the artist George Wyllie lived and worked and has impressive views of his beloved Clyde.

Wyllie’s play A Day Down a Goldmine dealt with the energies of people and planet perverted by economic imperatives. On active service in Japan, Wyllie was one of the first westerners to experience at first hand the horrors of Hiroshima — it was an experience that never left him, informing his politics and his approach to art.

Here, Murphy’s pleasing vision, which includes a lot of glass, curves, textured surfaces, and oak flooring, allows natural light reflecting off the sea to illuminate a series of Wyllie’s famous spires, partly inspired by his namesake, the Scottish-American engineer-artist, George Rickey.

Discussing these constructions — verticals balanced on a gimbal with a stone counterweight — Wyllie observed: “The Spire is designed to celebrate the space on which it stands. Beyond that its importance is of no importance. It can define any space and presence taken for granted ...”

Elsewhere, archival ephemera, sketches and meticulous technical drawings are accompanied by maquettes, models, and Wyllie’s welded creations. There’s even an oversized Wally Dug.

Wyllie inspired great love and affection during his lifetime. The Wyllieum will continue this vital legacy, ensuring his name is rightly celebrated well into the future.

To August 11