"You want to make something that's a bit bonkers"

From Big Heids to Heavy Metal, David Mach has always had grand designs. As the Fife sculptor prepares to create a multi-purpose structure at Edinburgh Park, Neil Cooper finds a man whose overall vision is driven by allure, drama, fantasy, legend . . . and shipping containers

David Mach is thinking big. The home studio of this Methil-born sculptor and icon of monumental public art resembles a small factory, with its production line of materials either laid out on a series of tables, or else neatly filed away in folders and drawers that occupy an entire wall.

Echoes of the former Turner Prize nominee’s earlier projects abound: miniature sumo wrestlers grapple on one table, sliced-up mini red telephone boxes lie on another workspace. As the wheels of industry turn, this all feeds into Heavy Metal, Mach’s current show at Pangolin London featuring maquettes that act as a showcase for future projects and proposals, which their creator aims to build on the grandest of scales. This includes plans for major works on a London roundabout and an epic construction in Mauritius. Also on show will be assorted models for ‘Mach 1’, a proposed landmark building created from shipping containers out at Edinburgh Park, which will eventually be an arts, events and conference venue as well as a large double-height gallery space. As Mach waxes lyrical, those models sit separately on assorted surfaces in both the studio and living room, as if awaiting repairs ever since Mach moved back to Scotland three years ago.

In this sense, everything in Heavy Metal is a work in progress. ‘It’s an odd kind of a show,’ Mach says of his exhibition at the north London sculpture-based gallery. ‘The plan is to make 15 to 20 maquettes for proposals, most of which we’re already working on.’ As one might expect of someone whose conceptual largesse has given rise to such monumental works as ‘Big Heids’ (1999), a series of three ten-metre-high heads on plinths visible on the M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow, Mach intends putting a spin on things to create a total environment.

‘I hate walking into a gallery and you’ve got loads of things sitting on plinths,’ he says. ‘I’m trying to make an installation out of that, and make it a little more interesting; so when you go in, it’s a bit like being a wee boy in a museum that has working parts and buttons to press. It won’t be the same as a sculpture maquette show.’ As Mach riffs in heroic monologues on the grand dreams and schemes bursting out of his head (he’s part stand-up, part mad scientist), this is something of an understatement.

‘We’ll make scale models of people to stand next to the sculptures that we’re proposing to make,’ he expounds. ‘We’re going to do a nudist thing, so I’ll ask half a dozen folks that I know if they want to get scanned, and they can just stand there naked and look up at this naked woman holding up a container, and be part of that. We’ll put sand at the base, and set it up as a beach; the naked guys will have shopping bags and hats, and there’ll be a couple of Coke tins laying on the sand, so you can really enjoy the setting of it. That will change it entirely. We’re going to have a hell of a week installing it, because I want a long battleship of plinths all connected together, that you can even sit in, with these little figures and the maquettes themselves, so we’ve got to be clever about how that works.’

Shipping containers feature prominently in Heavy Metal. The aforementioned nude woman is a work called ‘Caryatid Easy’, while ‘Designs For Chiswick’ will show off a tower of containers for a potentially 200 foothigh project. One of Mach’s earliest uses of containers was with ‘Temple At Tyre’. Built beside Leith Docks in 1994, Mach punned on the ancient Phoenician city with a pillared construction made of tyres, built aloft a mountain of containers; a maquette made for Heavy Metal references this.

Pride of place in the exhibition, though, is a model of ‘Mach 1’. Originally scheduled to open in 2020, the building’s construction was postponed due to the ongoing global pandemic. Now pushed back further, it will eventually form part of the Edinburgh Park development. All of this ties in with an industrial-based work ethic drummed into Mach from an early age.

Mach 1

PICTURE: COURTESY OF THE MACH, EDINBURGH PARK AND DIXON JONES

‘Where I grew up,’ he says, ‘if you stood still for ten seconds in the street as a kid, somebody would come up and wallop you on the back of the head and say, “don’t just stand there, do something”. We were surrounded by enormous endeavour. I remember seeing 800 feet-tall oil platforms with legs the size of four double-decker buses going past the window in Methil, and I’m going to art college the same day to start the week. These guys at college are welding steel together, and they’re saying, “look at the size of that”, and I’m going, “it’s a bit tiddly compared to the things I’ve just seen”.’ That industrial background had a major effect on Mach.

‘I can’t get enough of material. It can’t be big enough. It can’t be extravagant enough. It can’t be ridiculous enough in the way it’s made. I need that thing, otherwise I’m suspicious.’ And Mach’s obsession with shipping containers is clearly a result of this. He believes they have a unique position in the world that hardly any other object has.

‘Everything you’ve ever bought in your life, and everything you’re going to buy, is shaped, sized and equipped to fit in one of those boxes. All these things have a bit of clout in your life somehow or other, so that’s a very, very powerful thing, and has an enormous effect on your physical being. I’ve always said they’re like the temples, these things. They’re exactly the same shape as a Greek temple. They’re long, with those ribbed sides looking like pillars. So a container is more than just a big metal box; but I also love the idea that it’s a big metal box that allows me to become involved in really heavy-duty architecture.’

The latter includes Mach’s proposed project in Mauritius. He describes this as ‘a monster move, which will haul all the other sculptures that I’m making (and planning on making; all the little buildings and houses and so on), along right behind it, and before you know where you are, you’ll be making a whole bunch of these things. The story of building Mauritius: that’s like a full-length feature film made in Hollywood by the guy that made Avatar. There’s your competition.’

In terms of the drive behind his work, Mach says there’s a relentlessness to it. ‘In the art world it’s, “oh, let’s stand back and take a look”. Well, you don’t get that in industry. There it’s all about, “let’s get on with the job, get it done and make the delivery”.’ As for the work itself, according to Mach, ‘you have to make something that has allure, that has legend, that has fantasy, that has drama. Not just this square thing that’s going to be laid out and forgotten about ten minutes later. You want to make something that’s just a bit bonkers. Like making Rome.’

PICTURE: DUNCAN MCGLYNN