A new museum dedicated to the life, work, legacy and quirky vision of one of Scotland’s best-loved artists opens next weekend overlooking his beloved Clyde estuary and close to where he spent much of his working life.

Who is he?

He is George Wyllie. Born in Glasgow in 1921 and employed initially by the Post Office as an engineer, he served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and after being demobbed took a job as a Customs and Excise officer in Greenock. He eventually settled in Gourock, high on a hill, and it was here that he began his artistic career in earnest in his late 50s. He is best known as a sculptor – though he preferred to call what he did scul?ture and refer to himself as a scul?tor, a nod to his questing, questioning spirit and a mischievous dig, perhaps, at everything that’s po-faced in art. “I called my first decent exhibition Scul?ture because I was never sure it was sculpture and am still not sure,” he once said. “So I took the ‘p’ out of sculpture and put a question mark in.” George Wyllie died in 2012 aged 90.

What did he make?

He created many works, from prints and drawings to sculptures and a series of what he called ‘spires’ – tripod-like figures containing a pendulum often balanced by a stone and which were inspired partly by the teepees of America’s First Nation peoples and partly by the forest of masts which are an ever-present for those who live near harbours and ports.

What’s he famous for?

Wyllie is best known for the 80 foot long paper boat he built and launched on the Clyde close to the Finnieston Crane in 1989 – he called it The Paper Boat – and for his Straw Locomotive, an equally large-scale sculpture which hung from the same Glasgow landmark for six weeks before being transported to Springburn where it was solemnly burned. Both works were intended as a commentary on Glasgow’s place as a city of industry and industrial achievement – and on its subsequent decline as a centre for both shipbuilding and locomotive-making. The Paper Boat later ‘toured’, if that’s the right word, to New York, Liverpool, London and Antwerp, and it was ‘launched’ in Glasgow by the author Naomi Mitchison with the help of a choir singing a celebratory song Wyllie has composed specially.

The Herald: The WyllieumThe Wyllieum (Image: free)

Where is the museum?

Christened The Wyllieum, it’s located in Greenock Ocean Terminal on Custom House Way in Greenock, a £20 million cruise ship visitor centre designed by Richard Murphy Architects and opened last year. The museum itself is located within the complex and will house the world’s largest collection of works by Wyllie. Alongside the permanent display of works – including archival material and what’s known as ‘ephemera’ – there will be a rolling series of exhibitions by other artists which relate to Wyllie’s work by outlook or ethos, or react to it, or simply comment on it.

What is there to see?

The opening exhibition of Wyllie’s work is titled I Once Went Down To The Sea Again, a collection of his spires curated by Wyllieum director Will Cooper and Glasgow-based sculptor Sara Barker. Two of the spires on show are the ones he kept in the back of his car in case he found a spot which needed memorialising. “The Spire is designed to celebrate the place on which it stands. Beyond that, its importance is of no importance,” he once wrote. “It can define any space or presence taken for granted and signify them important.”

When does it open?

The Wyllieum opens to the public on Friday April 26 and thereafter operates between Wednesday and Sunday, noon to 5pm. Entrance is free.

I Once Went Down To The Sea Again runs until August 11.