David Mach's bright and colourful 'All the Fish in the Sea' is an large and intricate wall piece. Comprising of a bespoke cabinet containing 28 individual vases painstakingly covered in hundreds of dressmakers pins, each one celebrating colour, texture, shape and pattern. Mach found inspiration for this piece through looking at natural markings of animal skins, snake skins, insects etc. In this case, magnified images of fish scales and colourings have provided the main inspiration to these patterns.

David Mach RA is one of the UK’s most recognised and respected artists working in contemporary art today. Mach established his reputation in the 1980s with a series of increasingly ambitious sculptures and installations like 1983's Polaris, a life-size representation of the nuclear-powered submarine made from tyres, at London's Hayward Gallery.

Never content in making ‘easy’ art, Mach continuously challenges not only his physical ability but gravity and perception. He revels in the challenge of the physically demanding character of his works, siting that ‘hard graft never hurt anyone,’ and attributing his need to make physically demanding pieces as a response to growing up in the industrial region of Fife, Scotland. For Mach, the act of making is just as important as the finished article as he strives for a need to overcome the ‘Bohemian’ idea of the artist with their brush and chisel.

Born in Methil, Scotland in 1956, Mach graduated from the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee in 1979 before moving onto study at the Royal College of Art, London in 1982. He is a former Turner Prize nominee and was elected a Royal Academician in 1998. Pangolin London are proud to represent David Mach.

Provenance

From the artist

Exhibitions

Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2016, London; Masterpiece Art Fair, London, 2019.
Masterpiece Art fair, London 2019.