As the Clyde flows through Glasgow so it flows through the city’s art. The river banks have played host to an array of public art works inspired by the history, culture and powerful symbolism of the river, writes Lucy Brouwer.

George Wyllie, the Glasgow-born artist who died in 2012, used the river in two of his most famous ephemeral art works. The River Clyde flowed through all his work and it inspired him during the course of a long and creative life. Both the Straw Locomotive and the Paper Boat captured the imagination with their poignant symbolism of the decline in the city’s industrial heritage.

Finnieston Crane holding George Wyllie's Straw Locomotive

Wyllie’s Straw Locomotive, built to go up in flames. Photo Elliott Simpson CC BY SA 2.0

Straw Locomotive was a 78ft effigy of a steam engine constructed from steel, straw and chicken wire that Wyllie suspended from the landmark Finnieston Crane in May 1987. It was later taken to Springburn engineering works, once the heart of the Glasgow locomotive industry, and set ablaze in what the artist described as a Viking funeral.

Wyllie’s Paper Boat sculpture, a memorial to the city’s shipbuilding industry, sailed the Clyde, the Thames and eventually the Hudson River in New York in 1990.  Scottish artists continue to be influenced by Wyllie’s sense of humour, questioning nature and his insistence that art was a public rather than private matter.

The imposing form of the Finnieston Crane also features in Willie Rodger’s  100 foot long mural for the Exhibition Centre Rail Station painted in 1988. The Kirkintillock-born printmaker works with the economical lines of lino-cut, producing bold imagery that captures the character of the city and its people.

Mural in black and white agains red brick wall of Exhibition Centre

Exhibition Centre mural, photo Thomas Nugent CC-BY-SA-2.0

On the other side of the river, outside BBC Scotland’s Govan headquarters, stands the most expensive piece of public art ever erected in Glasgow. Toby Paterson’s Poised Array is 10 metres high and 20 metres long and cost £350,000. The steel and fibreglass construction’s colourful shapes represent the topography of Scotland’s different areas based on portions of the Ordinance Survey map.

Paterson's steel structure in blue, red, silver

Poised Array by Toby Paterson. Photo John Lord CC By 2.0

There is street art too. Under Kingston Bridge can be found just one of the many murals by the Glasgow-based, Sydney Australia-born, street artist Sam Bates. His photo realistic style has earned him a commission from Glasgow City Council for a series of pieces promoting the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Look out for his striking work all over the city. And it shouldn’t be hard to spot the work of five other Commonwealth artists taking part in the International Mural Project curated by Recoat Gallery for Festival 2014. These are striking large scale pieces exploring the theme of ‘Identity’ and will remain as permanent artworks.

Also concealed under the Kingston Bridge is the lighting installation Chroma Streams Tide and Traffic, by New York lighting artist Leni Schwendinger in collaboration with Ian Alexander of jmarchitects.

Sculptural armatures hold hi-tech lighting fixtures which project colour onto the underside of the central span of the Kingston Bridge. The lighting sequences and colour palette are linked to road traffic levels on the bridge and the tidal flows of the Clyde.

Purple light under Kingston Bridge reflecting with street lights in the Clyde

Clyde at Night: Photo Ian Dick CC by 2.0

The secretive, yet public walkways under the three bridges at Central Station, were the site of Glasgow-born artist Susan Philipsz’ 2010 Turner Prize winning outdoor sound work, ‘Lowlands’.

The site-specific installation combined three versions of the same song, 16th century Scottish lament Lowlands Away, as sung by the artist. Her work explored the way sound and space connect and define one another.

On the sturdy granite pillars that once held up another rail bridge are carved, in Greek and in English, the phrase, derived from Plato’s Republic ‘All greatness stands firm in the storm’.

This is the work of the internationally renowned Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. Carved in 1990, Glasgow’s year as European Capital of Culture, the pillars do indeed stand firm, but like so much of Glasgow’s industrial heritage which was built to last, their original purpose has become redundant.

Is Finlay’s work a celebration of the pillars’ survival or an ironic statement about imperial decline? Either way, the work challenges the viewer to reflect on an ever-changing city.

On Custom House Quay stands La Pasionaria, a stylised female figure representing Dolores Ibarruri, a Spanish communist who came to symbolise Republican resistance against fascism during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

La Pasionaria statue, arms outstretched against a blue sky

La Pasionaria, photo by Robert Orr CC By ND 2.0

The sculptor, Arthur Dooley, carved Dolores’ famous slogan “better to die on your feet than live forever on your knees” on the plinth. One of the few testaments to Glasgow’s radical history, it stands as a memorial to the 65 Glaswegians who went to Spain to fight fascism. Originally installed in the late 1970s, the monument was restored in 2010.

The Clyde continues to inspire creativity in Glasgow’s artistic community. The former Fish Market, The Briggait, is now home to WASPS, an organisation which offers affordable studio space to artists.

Buildings along the Clyde often get a second, sometimes even a third life and the Briggait is now occupied by a thriving community of over 100 artists and arts organizations. Art is one kind of greatness that stands firm on the Clyde.

You can see more art on our latest audio tour, Clydeside Promenade, made for Festival 2014 – and after the Games.

 Ian Hamilton Finlay's stone pillar

Greatness stands firm, photo by Anne CC By NC ND 2.0