David Mach: sculptor, installation artist, collage-maker, member of Britain's prestigious Royal Academy, soon to be board member of the National Portrait Gallery and coat-hanger bender extraordinaire. He wouldn't know how to describe his work or his style - even if he wanted to.
Mach hates pigeonholing people or objects, not least his work. The hard-talking 51-year-old Scottish artist has constructed sculptures from coat hangers, a life-size steam train from 185,000 bricks, a Polaris submarine from tyres, vast flowing structures made from thousands of tonnes of magazines, even a gigantic portrait of Virgin boss Richard Branson's smile from postcards. He specialises in putting everyday materials and subjects to unusual use.
His work has been shown throughout the world, from New York to Barcelona, and one of his latest commissions is for Hong Kong's new M1NT shareholders club (sister to the London club of the same name), which opens in Central on November 8.
The works destined for M1NT comprise 16 pieces, including an iconic print of Mao Zedong made from thousands of postcards of Marilyn Monroe and its mirror opposite: Monroe made from postcards of Mao. His ideas, he claims, are simply memories, fleeting snapshots of street life and other images. His conversation, too, is fleeting, in the wrong syntax, jumping from point to point and back again, often in half-finished sentences.
Mach is, by nature, hard to define or pin down. How would this son of gritty Fife, Scotland, born to an exiled Polish miner, describe himself or his style? 'I wouldn't.' He stares at me and takes a long drag on a cigarette as he sits in his three-storey southeast London mews studio. Because it's too broad? 'Yep. If I keel over tomorrow, there's still much more to come.'
So, is he a workaholic? 'I wouldnae call myself that, but put it this way, I put a load of self-styled workaholics to shame.' There's another long pause. His work has not been without controversy. Is he a