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 sc ...

and installation artist. 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.

Early life

Mach was born in 1956 in Methil, Fife. Mach studied at

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design (DJCAD) is part of the University of Dundee in Dundee, Scotland. It is ranked as one of the top schools of art and design in the United Kingdom. History Attempts were made to establish an art sch ...

(now a school of

University of Dundee The University of Dundee is a public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a university college in 1881 with a donation from the prominent Baxter family of textile manufacturers. The institution was, for most of its ...

Dundee Dundee (; ; or , ) is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, fourth-largest city in Scotland. The mid-year population estimate for the locality was . It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firt ...

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

from 1974, graduating in 1979, then at the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

between 1979 and 1982. Following several shows and public installations, Mach was nominated for the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award). ...

in 1988. Mach was elected Member of the

Royal Academy of Arts The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

in 1998, and was appointed Professor of Sculpture in 2000.

Work

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'' in 1983, 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, England. 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 G ...

, South Bank Centre,

. 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

nuclear arms race The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuc ...

meant to stir controversy. A member of the public, James Gore-Graham from West Kensington, who took exception to the piece tried to burn it down; unfortunately, he got caught in the flames himself and suffered 90% burns from the explosion and died three days later. In the early 1980s Mach started to produce some smaller-scale works assembled out of unstruck match sticks. These mostly took the form of human or animalistic heads and masks, like ''Elvis'', with the coloured tips of the match heads arranged to construct the patterned surface of the face. After accidentally setting fire to one of these heads, Mach now often ignites his match pieces as a form of

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

. He constructed ''Gorilla'' from coat-hangers. Brick Train Darlington - geograph

In 1997, Mach produced some larger-scale permanent public works such as ''Out of Order'' in

Kingston upon Thames Kingston upon Thames, colloquially known as Kingston, is a town in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, England. It is situated on the River Thames, south-west of Charing Cross. It is an ancient market town, notable as ...

, the '' Brick Train'' (a depiction of an LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard steam engine which held the speed record of 126mph in 1934), made from 185,000 bricks, which can be seen near Morrison's supermarket on the A66 just outside

Darlington Darlington is a market town in the Borough of Darlington, County Durham, England. It lies on the River Skerne, west of Middlesbrough and south of Durham. Darlington had a population of 107,800 at the 2021 Census, making it a "large town" ...

. and the ''Big Heids'' visible from the M8 between

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

and

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

. A second strand to Mach's work are his

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

pieces. Partly as a result of having access to thousands of reproduced images in the magazines left over from many of his installations, Mach began to experiment with producing collages. In 1999, he produced a mixed-media postcard and photo-collage of Sir Richard Branson, measuring 1.824 x 1.826 metres. he did a ''National Portrait,'' of 3 x 70 metres collage for the

Millennium Dome The Millennium Dome was the original name of the large dome-shaped building on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East (London sub region), South East London, England, which housed a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millen ...

that featured many images of British people at work and at play. In 2011, he joined forces with the Museum of Edinburgh, to produce an explosive display celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

Awards and honours

*1988 Mach was nominated for the

at the

Tate Gallery Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the UK ...

, London. *1992 Winner of the Lord Provost's Prize for Services to the Visual Arts in Glasgow.

References

External links

*
Works in the National Galleries of Scotland

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mach, David Living people 1956 births 20th-century Scottish male artists 21st-century Scottish male artists Alumni of the Royal College of Art Alumni of the University of Dundee British installation artists British collage artists People from Methil Royal Academicians Scottish contemporary artists Scottish male sculptors Alumni of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design