New exhibition celebrates the elaborate 'hard graft' sculptures of David Mach

UK-based artist David Mach is set to launch a solo exhibition at Pangolin London, which will showcase the artist’s elaborate approach to sculpture. Titled Heavy Metal, the exhibition will chart Mach’s multidisciplinary approach to balancing architecture and sculpture, including his ongoing obsession with shipping containers.

The exhibition will be composed of a series of maquettes depicting ongoing projects of Mach’s in London, Edinburgh, Mauritius, and Syria. Among the projects featured will be Mach1, an art gallery set to be built in Edinburgh Park, Scotland, which relies on shipping containers as its primary architectural vehicle.

Other projects on display will be a library for Antioch University in Damascus, and a giant sculpture for Chiswick Roundabout in London. The project material will be joined by several maquettes for public works of art, a series of new prints, and two new bronze sculptures that reference previous celebrated works by Mach; Temple at Tyre and Darlington’s Brick Train.

“After all these years I still don’t like the isolation of the studio,” Mach said regarding the exhibition. “I prefer to build installations and to work as publicly as possible as a kind of sculptural performance artist. I’ve built works in shopping centres, parks, streets and car showrooms as often as I have in galleries or museums. I enjoy the challenges of trying to manipulate unorthodox materials…preferably in vast quantities in the face of an ever-mounting but still beatable bureaucracy.”

“Like all artists I have to deal with the assault course of ever-increasing boundaries and barriers to creativity,” Mach continued. “With public art there are ever more hoops to jump through, health and safety issues to deal with, social agendas to consider, budgets and curators to get past... all part of the struggle but all do-able… and yes, I have my own axes to grind and I’m having great fun pushing those boundaries.”

Heavy Metal is the latest demonstration of Mach’s dynamic approach to sculpture; one which often employs everyday materials including coat hangers, pins, matches, and magazines. Through the production of physically demanding pieces, including a 1983 life-size representation of a nuclear powered submarine made from tyres in London’s Hayward Gallery, Mach seeks to overcome the “Bohemian” stereotype of the artist with a brush and chisel, instead adopting a philosophy that “hard graft never hurt anyone.”

Heavy Metal will run at Pangolin London from January 25th through March 25th, 2023.