David Mach was born in Methil, Fife, in 1956. He studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee (1974-79), and at the Royal College of Art, London (1979-82). A random look at his biography shows a life full of activity. For example, in 1989 there are listed twelve exhibitions or installations in ten different cities, ranging from…
read the full biography
David Mach was born in Methil, Fife, in 1956. He studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee (1974-79), and at the Royal College of Art, London (1979-82). A random look at his biography shows a life full of activity. For example, in 1989 there are listed twelve exhibitions or installations in ten different cities, ranging from San Francisco to Madrid and Milton Keynes to Melbourne. This is typical of his hectic work pattern, which built up to this pitch within four years of his leaving the Royal College, and continues unabated. He has recently been made a Royal Academician and was on the hanging committee for the 2006 Summer Exhibition.
Multiple mass-produced objects, most notably magazines, newspapers and car tyres, have been used consistently by Mach throughout his career. He brings diverse items together in large-scale installations with humour and social comment. His work is representational and controversial. An early work, Polaris 1983, shown at the Hayward Gallery in London, took the form of a submarine, but made of used car tyres. David Mach's sculpture is on the verge of being completely overwhelming in its scale and audacity. The density of these installations is echoed in his smaller sculptures where multiple objects are used to make the whole. Typical are the match head series: portraits made from unstruck matches glued together so that only the coloured heads show on the surface. A series of Mach's monumental photo-collages were displayed at the Millennium Dome. Recently, he has begun to make double-sized female figures from small, square objects such as three-dimensional postcards and scrabble pieces. These curvaceous ladies tower over the viewer, revealing their intricate construction.
