David Mach (born 18 March 1956) is a
Scottish
Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
*Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland
*Scottish English
*Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...
sculptor
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...
and installation artist.
Life and work
Mach was born in
Methil, Fife
Methil ( Scottish Gaelic: Meadhchill) is an eastern coastal town in Scotland. It was first recorded as "Methkil" in 1207, and belonged to the Bishop of St Andrews. Two Bronze Age cemeteries have been discovered which date the settlement as ...
.
His artistic style is based on flowing assemblages of mass-produced
objects. Typically these include magazines, vicious teddy bears, newspapers, car tyres, match sticks and coat hangers. Many of his installations are temporary and constructed in public spaces.
One example of his early magazine pieces, ''Adding Fuel to the Fire'', was an
installation assembled from an old truck and several cars surrounded and subsumed by about 100 tons of magazines, individually arranged to create the impression that the vehicles were being caught in an explosion of flames and billowing smoke.
An early influential sculpture was ''Polaris,'' exhibited outside the
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,700-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge, in the London Borough of Lambeth. It is a Grade I l ...
,
South Bank Centre
Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames (between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge).
It comprises three main performance venues (the Royal Festival Hall including the Nation ...
,
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
in 1983. This consisted of some 6,000 car tyres arranged as a life size replica of a
Polaris submarine. Mach intended it as a protest against the