A NEW museum dedicated to a Scottish artist is set to open in Greenock this week, with a variety of “wonderful works” to go on display.
The Wyllieum, set to open to the public on Friday, will celebrate the life and career of Scottish artist George Wyllie (1921-2012).
After a career working on the Clyde, Wyllie burst onto the Scottish art scene in the early 1980s having trained as an engineer with the Post Office before serving in the Royal Navy from 1942 to 1946.
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Speaking to The National, the museum’s director Will Cooper said the “core work” of the new gallery is to celebrate the artist, although admits Wyllie himself might not have been that keen.
“A lot of people we ask if we are a gallery or a museum. I’ve been doing this kind of job for 20 years and the differences are negligible,” he says.
“We want to celebrate this artist [below] from Greenock, but whilst he was alive he talked about how museums and art galleries was where art objects would go to die and that they should be out in the public.
“In the back of our mind, there’s a sort of humour that he possibly wouldn’t have thought this was the best means to display his work though I’d be surprised if anyone offered a museum with their name on it wouldn’t be excited.
“It’s brand-new, so there’s nothing been in here before and we have a clean slate to work from.”
The new museum is located on the waterfront and will include a gallery which can play host to a temporary exhibition.
While the majority of the work will come from Wyllie, it will also be a space for other contemporary artists from the area to showcase their work.
“It might be people that share thematic or ideological similarities,” says Cooper.
He continued: “I know a lot about George before but I didn’t know anything compared to the last year.
“The general ideas are quite varied but can really be boiled down to what he saw come and go on the Clyde.
“There’s a lot of industry change from 1921-2012 and so that difference I don’t think can really be fully understood if you haven’t actually witnessed that yourself.
“There was this incredible sense of activity and pride to be taken from this bit of water but that was then effectively obliterated in the 1980s.
“He talked about the ripping out of industry and the effect this would have, it’s really interesting to look at his work with some distance from his death but also from when the works were made.
“They’ve only become more prophetic and profound in the time since he died and that puts us in a lovely position to programme.”
What Cooper is particularly keen to stress though, is that Wyllie is indicative of the fact that art school isn’t always a necessity to make it in the industry.
That’s not to talk them down at all, but rather just to point out that the artist this museum is dedicated to was still able to create a legacy without the experience.
“He was an ‘untrained artist’ but I honestly hate that saying because it’s so reductive,” the director says.
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“It puts training on this hierarchical platform but he didn’t go to art school. He worked as a customs officer in Greenock.
“You don’t need to have that experience. You can learn lots of things at art school but you can also learn by not being there.”
More information on the gallery can be found HERE and it will officially open to the public on April 26.
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