Mach captivates audience with frank creative journey

The first hint that Dundee could host an art work by leading contemporary artist David Mach was made by University of Dundee Principal Sir Alan Langlands on Saturday when Mach returned to his university to deliver the annual Discovery Lecture.

Mach, whose large scale public art projects include the Big Heids off the M8 and the National Millennium Portrait in the Dome has created exhibits in cities across Europe and the USA but none so far in Dundee.

'I hope we can do something creative in Dundee which uses his work. What a disaster if we allow these works to go on show in Vienna, London, Barcelona ... and not in Dundee' Sir Alan told the audience of around 100 alumni and public gathered for the latest in a series of graduation events which have involved some 10,000 people in the city over last week.

His comments came at the end of a stimulating and free ranging lecture in the Bonar Hall in which Mach frankly and vividly recounted his creative journey from humble beginnings in Methil, Fife where he was lulled to sleep by the noise of the neighbouring brickworks, through his formative years at Duncan of Jordanstone College, to his position today as an artist of international acclaim.

He traced the roots of his interest in public art to a student project in Camperdown Park when he wove thousands of beech leaves into a roll of chicken wire and suspended it from a tree to create 'Carpet of Leaves'.

'It is still a very relevant piece for me today,' he said. In the process he was forced to engage in dialogue with passing park users whose often bemused and down to earth reactions were as stimulating to Mach as creating the art work itself.

'Art college was a protected environment - people were sympathetic to what you were doing. Outside it's a different thing altogether. Even the language is different. They'd say: 'All right sonny so what is it you think you're trying to do.' And you are forced to explain, and in explaining you understand... I got hooked on that live audience.'

In an early representational phase Mach used tonnes of books and magazines, carefully layered without any glue or fixative of any kind, to create symbolic sculptures. But the predictability of the representations soon bored him and he moved on to creating free flowing forms on a massive scale - a torrent of magazines swallowing up furniture, pianos, even a hearse. He would create these live in cities across the world, engaging in dialogue with spectators as he built and making bigger and bigger sculptures, climaxing with 145 tonnes of Daily Records arranged into towering classical columns.

The physical exhaustion of the work appealed to an artist brought up in an industrial small town where hard work was a way of life. Mach's irreverence and sense of humour bubbled through once more when his attention switched dramatically to Sindy Dolls. Not only did they offer the contrast of working on a smaller scale- 'It's rare for me to make something that doesn't take a month of bloody Sundays!' - but their articulated limbs were a point of fascination. Mach used these to real effect in one notable piece involving a spiral stair engineered to appear as if it was held up by a sisterhood of Sindies.

And in a gesture of homecoming to his university city he hinted: 'I would love the chance of working with publications from DC Thomson.'

The lecture was followed by a civic lunch hosted by Deputy Lord Provost Charles Farquhar.