Glasgow may be the epicentre for all things cultural relating to climate change during Cop26, but “doon the watter” in Greenock’s old Tobacco Warehouse, artist Willie Sutherland is offering up a cosmic creative take on the threat to our planet.
A View From The Moon runs until Saturday. It’s one of several Inverclyde initiatives funded by Creative Carbon Scotland’s Climate Beacons.
It is being hosted by Greenock-based art charity, RIG Arts, which does a power of creative work with communities in Inverclyde.
Sutherland’s hands-on art, which includes a life-sized spaceman made out of recycled cardboard, examines the effects of war on our planet.
Visitors to the show are also being invited to peer into a Doll’s House made by Sutherland, experiencing the effect of sunlight on our planet.
Sutherland, 50, is a late-bloomer in terms of his art. He studied fashion and textiles at Galashiels in the early 1990s before working in a series of office jobs.
A period of rehab for alcohol addiction at the start of this year saw his inner artist unleashed and, since then, he has made hundreds of self-portrait style sculptures out of recycled cardboard.
His critically acclaimed debut solo exhibition, Evolution Of Wa, staged at Glasgow’s CCA earlier this year, consisted of a series of self-portrait sculptures charting his alcoholism.
View From The Moon features loans from family of the late George Wyllie, a long-term resident of Inverclyde. Visitors are invited to switch on the lights of a Wyllie sculpture of a nuclear submarine and look through Sutherland’s Great Cheese Telescope.
The exhibition also features small clay “Earth Refugees” made by Syrian and Afghan refugees from local Inverclyde charity, Your Voice.
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