One of the most popular yet officially misunderstood artists in Scotland" is how filmmaker Murray Grigor describes veteran Scottish artist George Wyllie.

The works of the nonagenarian who "puts a question at the heart of his work" might be held in collections at Kelvingrove, but he's not yet made the National Galleries of Scotland. It is this duality that makes this Collins Gallery exhibition, the first in a year of events celebrating his work, all the more interesting.

"I think George is misunderstood for various reasons," says Collins' curator Laura Hamilton. "The problem with his work is that it's been perceived by many in the contemporary art world as being populist, because many people enjoy it and 'get it'. He's seen as a clown and a showman – and he is – but there's a difference between popular and populist."

Wyllie, who was deeply influenced by Joseph Beuys, took an unconventional route into art. Born in Glasgow in 1921, he started out as a post office engineer before serving in the Navy during the Second World War. Later he became a customs officer, studying welding part time before becoming an artist at the age of 45.

"The Russians used to have 10-year plans," Wyllie once said, looking back on his career in an interview with Jenny Simmons for the British Library Sound Archive, "and I thought I'll make a 10-object plan. I will make 10 objects to see what happens and I'll not worry about what they look like."

A decade later, he had his first major solo show, Scul?ture, at the recently opened Collins Gallery. Rather fittingly, this latest show, marking his retirement, is the last show at the Collins before it closes permanently in May 2012.

Mining the vast archive Wyllie has donated to Strathclyde University, an institution with which he has had a long association, the exhibition is structured around the remarkable in-depth interviews with Simmons (2003-04). All his major works are represented in documented form, alongside about 30 works on paper and film – and prolific writings, which Hamilton says one young art history student, recently introduced to Wyllie's work, likened to that of David Shrigley.

Those who are familiar with Wyllie's work – fans include Sean Connery and Alan Cumming – would probably point the uninitiated to his Straw Locomotive (1987), in which he burnt a straw effigy of a train hanging from the Finnieston crane during the Thatcher years, or Paper Boat, which he sailed into New York harbour complete with quotations from Adam Smith's Theory Of Moral Sentiments, as key works.

"His work is accessible, quirky, but it also has a much deeper meaning," says Hamilton. "A lot is to do with equilibrium, with our place in the world, with humanity and a lack of humanity."

Once, inspired by Beuys, Wyllie bagged air from Caithness and released it in London "to bring them a breath of fresh air".

The chances are, if you are not familiar with Wyllie's work, you will be by the end of this year's Whysman Festival events. And when this culminates in a major retrospective at the Mitchell Library in November, the artist's legacy might still be up for debate, but surely he will no longer be "misunderstood".

George Wyllie: A Life Less Ordinary is at the Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (0141 548 2558, www.collinsgallery.strath.ac.uk, www.whysman.co.uk) until April 21 (closed April 6–9)

Ruth Nicol: Traversed

Open Eye Gallery

34 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh

0131 557 1020

www.openeyegallery.co.uk

March 12–28

Finding beauty in the M8 may seem unlikely, but painter Ruth Nicol proves that beauty is in the eye of the beholder in this collection of rigorously urban central belt works. Always fascinated by the idea of travel, whether real or metaphysical, her landscapes teeter somewhere between realism and abstraction. Nicol, a former business systems analyst with a major banking firm, trained as a mature student at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating less than two years ago, and is now based in Leith, where the juxtaposition between dock and domesticity, industry and leisure, frequently catches her eye. While this exhibition ventures further from her stamping ground than her previous one at Edinburgh's Arts Complex, which took Leith in winter as its subject matter, the boats, cranes and warehouses of Leith's ever-developing shore still feature strongly, alongside bridgings – the titular traversals - of various sorts, elsewhere.

Contextus: A Re-weaving Of Fabric's Context In Art

CURiO Gallery, Arts Complex

St Margaret House

London Road, Edinburgh

07943 511583

Curiogalleryedinburgh.wordpress.com

March 17–24

The mobile CURiO Gallery's latest exhibition aims to challenge the general public's perception of textile art with a group show from artists ranging from the up-and-coming to the established in Edinburgh's cavernous Arts Complex. Fusing tradition and modernity, some of the artists incorporate synthetic materials into work using traditional highly complex and skilled techniques, while others, like Collette Paterson, who has developed a bonding technique to combine felt and neoprene to make jewellery, invent their own processes. There is only one piece of clothing on display – a deliberate curatorial choice – a costume from a performance piece. But everywhere is recycled history and a contemporary slant, from Larisa Guzova, who combines textiles with light, to Duncan Robertson, who embroiders artillery on to his works, and Liza Green, who incorporates textiles with spent rounds from bullets. There will be less warlike matter, perhaps, in the family activity workshops on the opening weekend (March 17-18) when visitors can mount their own fabric experiments.