DAVID MACH Breaking Images, 2008 show
14 October - 4 November 2008
Artist Opening
Friday 17th October
Cocktails
6pm - 9pm
Rarely does Hong Kong get to play host to a contemporary artist of truly international fame and stature, but The Cat Street Gallery is delighted to present an exciting new body of work from Turner Prize finalist David Mach as the opening exhibition - 'Breaking Images'
Scottish born David Mach was elected into the elite band of the British Royal Academy's Royal Academicians in 1998 (and became Professor of Sculpture in 2000) joining such luminaries as artists David Hockney, Peter Blake, Anish Kapoor and architects Norman Foster and Richard Rogers.
Mach rose to prominence in the early 1980s with his remarkable large scale sculptures and installations, most notably 'Polaris', the life-size replica submarine made from 6000 tyres exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, London. This was the scene of a terrible tragedy. An arsonist set alight to it and also (presumably accidentally) himself and died from his injuries.
From his earliest student pieces at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and the Royal College, Mach's work has been characterized by the use of multiple, mass-produced objects (that he refers to as 'nothing material'), most notably newspapers, tyres, postcards, matches and coat hangers.
Mach's postcard collages explore the possibilities of animation and fluidity in the process, to establish a relationship between the base material of the postcards and the image on top. Thus in 'Hidden Depths', one of the works commissioned for the exhibition, thousands of identical postcards of Ursula Andress overlap to form a 5ft square image of Sean Connery. Other works include an image of the Chinese flag using an image of Mao and an image of the Dalai Lama using an image of the Tibetan flag and the Queen of England using an image of "the King" aka Elvis. In this way two iconic images merge into one to form a unique and large scale work of art.
As well as exhibiting extensively Mach has also made a number of commissioned public sculptures in the UK.
Mach has works in public collections at the Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, the National Portrait Gallery (a postcard collage of Richard Branson), the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the British Council collection and many other private and public collections too numerous to mention.
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