Scul?tor gives rare works to beloved Clyde

MORE than 20 years after he created his iconic Paper Boat sculpture to highlight the decline of Scottish shipbuilding, veteran artist George Wyllie is making a "last stand" to protect the industrial heritage of the River Clyde.

• Making a splash: Riverside Museum Appeal curator Charles Jamieson with Wyllie's Paw and Maw and "off the" by Lisa Kelly McNairn. Photograph: Donald MacLeod

Despite retiring earlier this year, Wyllie, 88, who is in a care home, has donated a number of rare works to an exhibition opening in the city's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum this week, which will raise funds for the city's new Riverside Museum.

Wyllie, who always describes himself as a "Scul?tor" to signify his break with tradition, has donated his pieces to The River Runs Through It. The exhibition opening on Saturday, includes a sculpture, entitled Paw and Maw of a couple in a rowing boat, valued at around 5,000, and a drawing, The Clyde, The Clyde, The Beautiful Clyde. Previous artworks by Wyllie have sold for up to 20,000 while his large public sculptures have cost up to 100,000.

The new museum, a landmark, wave-shaped building designed by internationally-renowned Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, will next year become the new home of Glasgow's popular transport collection, founded to conserve the city's manufacturing past. In the 19th century, Glasgow was the powerhouse of the British Empire, producing heavy goods from train carriages to ships.

Wyllie, who was a customs officer before turning to art, drew his inspiration from Scotland's industrial legacy. His most famous works include the Straw Locomotive (1987), a full-size sculpture of a train carriage which was suspended over the Clyde by a crane, and his Gulbenkian Prize-winning Paper Boat (1989), which he sailed internationally in rivers from the Clyde to the Hudson in New York. Regarded as one of Britain's most influential artists, he was awarded an MBE in 2005

The artist's daughter Louise, who acts as his spokeswoman now he is too frail to give interviews, said her father had a "passion" for the Clyde. "His first reaction was, 'Thank God somebody has recognised the importance of the river'," she said.

"He said he had found the river colourful and stimulating throughout his life, especially as a child when he went on holidays on the west coast, and got great enjoyment from it. He was also very interested in using the river a lot more - he wanted to see aqua-buses on it so people could go up and down - so I think he felt that an exhibition which demonstrated the importance of the Clyde was something in which he wanted to be involved."

Ms Wyllie said the exhibition would be an "unusual opportunity" to purchase her father's work, which has rarely been offered for sale in recent years. . Of the works that the family still holds, she added, many are large scale, and will probably end up in public collections after the family has staged a retrospective of his career to mark his 90th birthday at the end of next year.

Neil Baxter, president of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, who previously commissioned public art from Wyllie, including the Millennium Clock, said the artist had long been inspired by the Clyde, and cared deeply about its relationship with Glasgow.

"There is little doubt that George Wyllie is one of Scotland's greatest ever sculptors, and also one of the best known and best loved," he said. "He has given sometimes wise, always ironic commentary on the city of Glasgow, Glasgow's industry, and its river repeatedly throughout his career.

"Shipping, rail manufacture, and making things out of metal with great ingenuity was what Glasgow was all about and George Wyllie continues to reflect that."

Other leading artists taking part in the Kelvingrove initiative include Peter Howson, and Adrian Wiesnewski, members of the New Glasgow Boys group, whose work will be seen together for the first time in 20 years, and Jimmy Watt, the father of Alison Watt, whose work has been bought by the Queen.

Each of the 29 Scottish artists involved in the exhibition, with the exception of Wyllie, who is too ill, visited the Riverside Museum site before producing a piece specifically in response. While the building itself features large in the exhibition, others have paid tribute to those associated with the Clyde - including Wyllie, whose paper boat sails on the river in an Alasdair Wallace painting, Riverside Flock.

Prices for the works range from 375 to 20,000, with each artist donating half their fee to the Riverside Museum Appeal, which remains 1.1 million short of its aim of contributing 5m to the 74m scheme. Jan Patience, who helped organise the exhibition, said it was hoped it would generate up to 300,000 for the appeal.