David Mach (born 18 March 1956) is a Scottish sculptor and installation artist.

Mach's artistic style is based on flowing assemblages of mass-produced found art objects. Typically these include magazines, newspapers, car types, match sticks and coat hangars. Many of Mach installations are temporary and constructed in public spaces.

An example one 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 are being caught in an explosion of flames and billowing smoke.

An early influential sculpture was Polaris shown outside the Hayward Gallery in 1983. This consisted some 6000 car tyres arranged as a life size replica of a Polaris submarine. Mach intended it as a protest against the nuclear arms race. The work was intended to be controversial, but a member of the public who took exception to the piece tried to burn it down. Unfortunately he got caught in the flames himself and suffered fatal burns.

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, 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.

A second strand to Mach's work are his collage pieces. Partly as a result of having access to thousands or reproduced images in the magazines left over from many of his installations, Mach began to experiment with producing collages. So far, this has culminated in National Portrait a 3m by 70m collage for the Millennium Dome which featured many images of British people at work and at play.

Mach studied at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee from 1974, graduating in 1979, then at the Royal College of Art, London between 1979 – 82. Following several shows and public installations, Mach was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1988. In 2000 he joined the Royal Academy of Arts as their Professor of Sculpture.

External links

• David Mach's official web site (http://www.davidmach.com/)
• Portfolio (http://www.sculpture.org.uk/artists/DavidMach) and information at sculpture.org.uk.

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