AN exhibition celebrating the work, vibrancy and renewed optimism at shipyards, created by a renowned Scottish artist and broadcaster will open in Irvine this week.

This is the first showing of Lachlan Goudie’s Shipyard, an unprecedented artistic exploration of contemporary Scottish shipbuilding across a range of different mediums.

Shipyard, which opens at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine on Friday, October 13, will run until February 12, and feature around 70 artworks documenting construction of the next generation of Britain’s naval vessels – the world leading Type 45 Destroyers and the monolithic Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers.

Artist Lachlan Goudie said: “Shipyards are awe-inspiring places, the sublime sense of scale and energy, the furious and relentless pace of component panels being assembled into towering monuments of steel.

“There is noise, there is chaos and fire, there’s a visceral sense that you’re part of a vast, industrial organism that will spit you out of the way, unless you watch your step.

“As an artist, you hardly want to blink for fear that you’ll miss a bizarre, unworldly juxtaposition of shapes, colours, pipes and scaffolding.

“Yet, it was also important to me to capture the shipyard workers. Walking in I might have expected machismo and aggression but instead I found welders, gaffers, sparks and chippies intense and sensitive people intrigued by what I was creating.

“Keen to dispel the idea that the yards are a vacuum of creativity and ideas, they had many enlightening things to say about my work, their environment, the principles of shipbuilding and the sophisticated craftsmanship their profession entails.

“It has been a great privilege to document the extraordinary work of the Scottish shipyards and the character, openness and identity of the people that make everything happen.

“Now I am proud to be exhibiting this work at the home of the nation’s maritime collection.

“The works were produced amidst the sparks and the steel of a working yard and it seems appropriate to me that they should be displayed at the Scottish Maritime Museum, surrounded by the engineering artefacts, the machines, templates, the models and ship’s hulls that constitute our national, maritime legacy.”

As well as co-presenting BBC1’s The Big Painting Challenge, Goudie has written and presented many programmes for BBC Four.