{"id":551371,"date":"2026-04-26T08:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T08:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/551371\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T08:56:12","slug":"museum-dedicated-to-sculptor-celebrates-return-of-berlin-burd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/551371\/","title":{"rendered":"Museum dedicated to sculptor celebrates return of ‘Berlin Burd’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The Wyllieum, a contemporary art gallery in Greenock<\/a> dedicated to Wyllie, will mark its second anniversary today and more than 70,000 visits, with the opening of a new exhibition by Keller – The Curtain’s Edge.\n<\/p>\n

\n Ursula Keller with Willie Sutherland, CEO, The Wyllieum, (Image: The Wyllium)\n<\/p>\n

\n Keller taught art in Berlin and first visited Glasgow in 1980.\u00a0She fell in love with the city and has continued to visit every year since.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n She met Wyllie in Berlin in 1988 when her pupils worked with him while he was visiting the city with his five-metre-high stainless-steel Berlin Burd.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n He had made it in Scotland and transported it across Europe to Berlin overlooking a section of the four-metre-high Wall. \u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n At the time, Wyllie said: ”My bird looked over the Wall.\n<\/p>\n

\n Berlin 1988 (Image: George Wyllie)\n<\/p>\n

\n “Berliners said it was foolish to confront one absurdity with another – but a year later the wall came down!”\n<\/p>\n

\n Wyllie\u2019s Berlin Burd remains in situ at a small piece of the Wall left behind after it was finally dismantled in 1989.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Born in Glasgow in 1921, George Wyllie trained as an engineer with the Post Office before serving in the Royal Navy from 1942 to 1946.\n<\/p>\n

\n He was a customs and excise officer for 30 years before becoming a full-time artist in his late fifties, pioneering socially engaged artwork such as the Straw Locomotive (1987), which hung over an empty Clyde as a requiem for Glasgow’s engineering prowess; and Paper Boat of the Origami Line (1989), a reminder that over two fifths of the world’s merchant ships were launched in The Clyde in the early 1900s.\n<\/p>\n

\n George Wyllie, with his paper boat on the River Clyde (Image: GEORGE WYLIE)\n<\/p>\n

\n He also built sculptures that depict a home buckling under the pressure of its overburdened mortgage and the Running Clock, outside Buchanan Bus Station.\n<\/p>\n

\n George\u2019s sense of social justice and equality was formed, in no small part, by his experiences as a younger man.\n<\/p>\n

\n George Wylie’s Running Clock (Image: \u00a9 Drew Farrell)\n<\/p>\n

\n The socialist principles of shipbuilders, dockworkers and the river economy were compounded by Wyllie\u2019s experiences during the Second World War.\n<\/p>\n

\n Serving in the Royal Navy George was one of the first foreign nationals to visit Hiroshima shortly after America dropped the atomic bomb.\n<\/p>\n

\n George died in 2012, shortly after his 90th birthday.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n On their first meeting, Ursula recalls: \u201cI used to work as an art teacher in Berlin and I was asked to do a workshop with George Wyllie.\n<\/p>\n

\n “I’d never heard of him and he said okay, you produce a lot of birds, hundreds of birds with material from the scrapyard and I will bring a big bird, five metres high which looks over the Berlin Wall, which was still there at that time – that was 1988.\n<\/p>\n

\n “He said, the big bird will tell the small birds what’s going on.\n<\/p>\n

\n “The highlight of the trip was getting to know George and his wife, Daphne.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n “We went out to dinner, and I looked after them and we became great friends and I was a regular visitor to Gourock<\/a> to stay with them.\n<\/p>\n

\n “I helped him putting up an exhibition he had on the Isle of Lewis. It was give and take on both sides.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Two years later, Keller and 20 children from Berlin visited Glasgow on the European Union\u2019s Understanding Bus, as part of Glasgow\u2019s City of Culture in 1990, followed by a return trip to Berlin for children from Strathclyde Visual Arts Centre.\n<\/p>\n

\n “He was larger than life, he had a great sense of humour,” says Ursula.\n<\/p>\n

\n “He was great with the students. He wasn’t always easy to work with but who is easy?\n<\/p>\n

\n “He was very precise [but] he gave the students the freedom to express themselves and he would help them with welding and hammering.\n<\/p>\n

\n “My favourite sculpture was the Straw Locomotive because that is a really strong statement about skills in Glasgow that have been lost now.\n<\/p>\n

\n “For the messages he wanted to bring across, that was the strongest to me. I still regret that I didn’t know him at that time.\n<\/p>\n

\n “Most of the things he did, they just warm my heart but they do have a relevance, socially.”\n<\/p>\n

\n She says Glasgow shares many similarities with Berlin.\n<\/p>\n

\n “Berlin and Glasgow are both working class cities, they have great architecture,” says the artist.\n<\/p>\n

\n “People are down to earth with a similar sense of humour. Glasgow to me from the very beginning felt like a second home.\n<\/p>\n

\n “It was just the language I had to get used to.”\n<\/p>\n

\n The Wyllieum will show Keller\u2019s exhibition The Curtain\u2019s Edge in the gallery\u2019s The Upstairs Basement.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n “It’s based on the concept of Triptychs and it has a Scottish theme- it’s a lot about rain,” she says.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Keller has developed a unique 3D-process which evolves photographic layers in a translucent medium, mainly resin-coated (to achieve an opaque transparency).\n<\/p>\n

\n Read more:\n<\/p>\n

\n Keller said she was “thrilled” to be showing her work in Wyllie\u2019s gallery.\n<\/p>\n

\n She said: \u201cI am so happy to be back in Scotland and very proud to be showing my new work in this beautiful gallery in Greenock, dedicated to George.\n<\/p>\n

\n “I really miss him and his dear wife, Daphne.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n “It’s great to see what\u2019s been achieved by the George Wyllie Foundation over the past two years.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure George would love this place.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Keller took a sabbatical in Glasgow in 1993, photographing the city\u2019s buildings.\n<\/p>\n

\n In May 1997, during Mayfest, her show \u2018A Gallus Riviera\u2019 was held at the innovative half gallery\/half dental practice, Lloyd Jerome Gallery at 200 Bath Street.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Jerome championed young artists and hosted Glasgow Society of Women Artists’ annual show.\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n The work shown was inspired by the then Lord Provost, Pat Lally’s surreal comment: ”Given the obvious lack of beaches in the city, we need to give our visitors some alternatives.”\n<\/p>\n

\n Taking scissors, paste, and a colour copier, Keller created hundreds of pictures of \u2018A Gallus Riviera\u2019: George Square<\/a> with swimming pools and palm trees; Kelvingrove Art<\/a> Gallery collaged amid the sand dunes of the Sahara; Byres Road<\/a> with Vesuvius; The Finnieston<\/a> Crane and Luxor.\n<\/p>\n

\n ”It was my thank you to Glasgow,” she says.\n<\/p>\n

\n Lally went to see Keller\u2019s show and liked what he saw. Julian Spalding, the city\u2019s Director of Museums at the time, bought five Keller collages for donation to Gallery of Modern Art\u2019s collection.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n Keller\u2019s next show Teasmade at Lloyd Jerome featured a group of tea makers. It was also an alarm clock, bedside light and, in some cases, a radio. Keller arranged for all of them to buzz at the same time.\n<\/p>\n

\n The Lloyd Jerome Gallery also featured shows by George Wyllie, Douglas Gordon, Peter Howson and Talking Heads\u2019 David Byrne had a photography exhibition there in 1999.\n<\/p>\n

\n The gallery closed in 2005 when Jerome moved to New Zealand and he and Keller still keep in touch.\n<\/p>\n

\n Willie Sutherland, CEO, The Wyllieum, said:\u00a0“Since opening two years ago, we have welcomed over 70,000 visitors and worked with a great many local artists in our temporary exhibition space and through community projects.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n “It’s great to have Ursula back on our shores to exhibit in George’s gallery and museum. It’s been wonderful hearing all about their time together and the friendship they had.”\n<\/p>\n

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