‘The Royal Scottish Academy,’ as captioned by way of explanation at this group show curated by its former president, Arthur Watson, ‘is made up by artists and architects elected by their peers and is in essence a collective.’ As the caption also points out, George Wyllie, in whose honour the building we are in was created, was considered an anomaly. As a customs officer and jazz musician turned late blooming sculptor, he was a wild card and joker in the pack who was nevertheless welcomed into the RSA club with open arms.
For all Wyllie’s bunnet and overalls bonhomie that came with his work, it must never he forgotten that his environmental sculptural interventions are some of the greatest public artworks of recent times. He is also probably the only RSA member to have a purpose built museum created in their honour.
This show was brought together by Watson to celebrate the RSA’s 200th anniversary with something of a greatest hits compendium that joins the dots between several generations of artists and events in a way that all lead back to Wyllie. In this way one might regard the exhibition as one giant collaborative sculpture between Wyllie and his peers and pals that gathers up past works to make a brand new whole.
So we see photographic documentation of Wyllie in Beuys’ studio, as snapped, but of course, by Richard Demarco, and the New Tendencies in Scottish Contemporary Art: Sarajevo (1988) exhibition that gifts this one its title. There are photographic remnants of the 1990 Venice Biennale from David Mach, Kate Whiteford and Watson. Exercises in aluminium, bronze and steel by fellow travellers such as Benno Schotz, Jake Harvey, Frank Pottinger, Gareth Fisher and Fred Bushe are on show, as is an untitled screenprint by Eduardo Paolozzi. From Wyllie himself, pages from his A Day Down a Goldmine book, a giant catapult, and a witty take on Adam Smith’s own greatest hits with Adam Also Wrote ‘The Moral Sentiments’. (2001).
More wit is to be had in the faux monumentalism of Edward Summerton’s Hide for Watching Standing Stones (2023), which looks like something straight out of 1970s folk horror, but which is actually a cunning piece of environmental camouflage.
The room is dominated by Watson’s Two Seas, Sixth State, a large-scale work that draws from its original Venice 1990 construction, reconstituted here with guy ropes and wood salvaged from the wreckage. Oak labels highlight both the stopping off points en route to the Biennale site as well as ports closer to home. On the floor, a pile of screenprinted vinyl jackets that resembles a fisherman’s off duty cloakroom.
One must mention as well the green bucket placed in the gallery during inclement weather one weekend I late February to catch the unfortunate leak from the ceiling. While not deliberately an exhibit, both its colourful presence and its steady drip looks and sounds like something Wyllie might enjoy, hole in the roof notwithstanding. While one hopes the leak has been repaired by now, the green and red buoys bobbing about in the bay beyond the Wyllieum’s panoramic windows suggests another piece of synchronicity. This again might be regarded as an accidental off-site contribution to the exhibition. Either way, the show itself has the air of a living scrapbook of friends and colleagues mingling around each other down the years.
The Wyllieum, Greenock until 31 May.
Scottish Art News, April 2026
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