David Mach: Precious Light

Whilst in Edinburgh, I went to the David Mach exhibition at the City Art Centre. To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, David Mach has created tons of collages that convey stories in the bible. It was absolutely mind blowing. The craft of these vast pictures, put together with painstaking detail. It was interesting to realise that this exhibitions was an amalgamation of so many real life people and situations, many violent and full of horror, but brought together in very fantastical images. David Mach is not a religious man himself but concluded that they do indeed represent mankind.

A piece that interested me most was a triptych consisting of a central collage flanked by two photographs of eyes, the left young and right, old. The impression you get from the middle collage is that it is heaven and hell, top and bottom. Within the eyes are two different sections of the central collage, but which, by themselves could be heaven or hell. For me, it raised interesting questions on attitude, mindset and opinion, perceptions of good and bad, right and wrong.

Also on one floor of the exhibition, you could watch the artist and his team make the final collage of the exhibition, there were stacks of boxes at the back of the room each labelled with a genre of photograph like cars or houses. Having done a lot of collage work in the past, this was a fascinating and brilliant exhibition to go to.

Here are my favourite pieces from google, I was sad I couldn't take photographs but like most things, you have to see the real thing to appreciate the incredible scale and detail of these creations!