Like a wave of paper exploding through the wall, engulfing cars
Sculptor, writer, poet and drummer – David Mach is a very busy man
Sculptor David Mach discusses his unusual artwork
HIS work might be shown all over the world, from London to Tokyo, Moscow, Zurich, Sydney, and Paris, but the award-winning sculptor David Mach always loves to return home for exhibitions in his native Scotland.
“I try and get up there every month,” he says. “We have the best light in the whole of the UK! That beach between Largo and Leven has given me so many ideas, it’s a breeding ground for ideas and creativity.”
Born in Methil, Fife, in 1956, David’s latest interactive installation was showcased just 32km (20 miles) down the road in Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries, from October 2019 to July this year, although lockdown interrupted that.
Members of the public were invited in to share the creative process as David arranged shipping containers, sea-worn wood, buoys and six tonnes of newspapers into a work of art, Odyssey.
This work is typical of the Turner Prize-nominated sculptor. His epic pieces are so beyond the everyday they
are almost futuristic, involving everything from telephone boxes, matches, tyres, Scrabble pieces and postcards.
Newspapers, it seems, play an important and recurring role in David’s art. A previous show at Glasgow’s Cass Art Venue involved more than five tonnes of newsprint provided by The Herald newspaper, and was set in an art store rather than a gallery.
Named Against the Tide, the installation was a comment on the tide of information we receive daily and the questions this information raises about our lives.
Other artworks have involved between 20 and 165 tonnes of newspaper, one designed to look like a “wave of paper exploding through one of the gallery walls and cascading through the room, engulfing objects such as cars, furniture and airplanes” – as David says.
David’s art is often political and one of his most controversial early sculptures was Polaris, exhibited outside the Royal Festival Hall, London, in 1983. It consisted of 6000 car tyres arranged as a life-size replica of a Polaris submarine, and was intended as a protest
against the nuclear arms race. The sculpture was the source of much controversy and a member of the public even attempted to burn it down. Unfortunately, he got caught in the flames and later died in hospital.
Despite the depths of creativity and imagination that the sculptor clearly possesses, David admits he wasn’t initially keen on the idea of following art as a career.
“I was a big dope at school, I couldn’t make any decisions,” he says. “I was interested in art, but I didn’t have a huge desire to be an artist myself.”
David’s teacher, Mr Barclay at Buckhaven High School, encouraged him to go to Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee.
“I found myself at art college as my art teacher pushed me there. And then I thought, ‘Oh god – I like this!’”
Touchingly, David is still in contact with this former teacher. “I was on the phone to him yesterday and I saw him and his wife recently. He is such a marvellous man – I guess I have a lot to thank him for.”
After college, David’s talents were soon recognised and he was offered a place at the Royal College of Art in London to study sculpture.
Having lived in London now for more than 40 years, he’s becoming a bona fide Londoner. Though with his strong Fife accent, he still sometimes gets asked if he’s just down for the weekend.
“When you’re a Scot, you can feel quite an outsider,” he says. “It means that you’re a person of no fixed abode. I’m definitely a Scot and a Londoner too, I have a big life here in London.”
David believes his upbringing in Scotland has played a huge part in his life and work.
“I was brought up in a physical environment in Methil, Fife, hugely physical. Massive industrial amounts of physicality in every direction you looked.
“It seemed they made everything in the world there. Alongside a great physical coastline there was great industry and it was a great place to grow up.”
I was interested in art, but I didn’t have a huge desire to be an artist myself
In 1999, David turned his admiration of Scotland’s industry into a sculpture that overlooks the M8 between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Big Heids are 10 metres (33 feet) high and weigh 18 tonnes each. Welded from steel tubes, they are a tribute to Lanarkshire’s steel industry.
When David returns to Scotland, he has a cottage in Largo on the east coast of Fife, where the stunning beaches and scenery inspire his creativity.
“It’s a beautiful part of Scotland,” he says. “There are fantastic beaches, great weather, it’s like the Scottish Riviera – sometimes the sun beats so hard you could mistake it for the Med – until you put your toe in the water!”
As well as creating awe-inspiring artworks that now fill cathedrals and motorway verges, David has also taken up writing poetry and short stories, and performing in a band. It’s a surprise he actually has time to sleep.
“I’m ludicrously ambitious about writing with no right to be”, he says. “I want to be a novelist and a poet – I have about 100 or so stories on the go, mostly autobiographical stuff. There are other things happening on the back of that – I do lot of writing in bed!”
He has also performed poetry at Edinburgh Festival and the Cheltenham literary festival, and recently formed a band, 27 Zeros, in which he plays the drums.
“A lot of my work involves rhythm, repeat pattern, processes and actions. That rhythm is part of the engineering of my life.
“I never had time before to learn how to play the drums, Then I had a friend whose wife had a show in my studio and in return he gave me a lesson. I played the drums for about 20 minutes and I was hooked – a week later I was playing in a band”
“It’s all rather thrilling – I love it! And I enjoy the chance to make as much racket as we can.”
It can be surmised that the man rarely stops. Even in mid-conversation his mind is constantly whirring, and you have to concentrate to keep up. “You have to put stuff out there,” David says. “Learn a musical instrument, try hard, get your hands dirty, do things that may appear too hard or that take too long – you must make an effort. I like effort – I like the extravagance of effort!”
Now that David has tasted success in almost all branches of creativity does it bring more confidence, making it things easier to begin new projects?
“I still tend to work on the variable that people don’t know who the hell I am. If I find myself working somewhere people know me – then it’s a bit of a bonus. I’ll measure ‘success’ at a later date. While you’re still working, you’ve just got to beaver away at it”.
Maybe it’s a Fifer thing.
“l like effort – I like the extravagance effort!” of