David Mach: King James project's been a work of biblical proportions

With his biggest-ever solo exhibition having opened at the City Art Centre, David Mach, explains why he feels the subject matter deserves such a huge undertaking

In 2000, having just finished my National Portrait for the Millennium Dome, a 120-feet long collage, I was looking for the next monumental project.

In the National Portrait, my collage had accelerated, becoming action-packed and sometimes apocalyptic. I thought then about the possibility of making collages of the stories of the King James Bible.

The Bible has it all - war, famine, sex, death, pestilence, jealousy, revenge - as an artist I think I would struggle to find a richer source of inspiration.

The King James Bible is the bible I grew up with, the only bible I have ever known.

It would be a natural choice of bible if I ever was to pursue this project, no other book has influenced our language and culture and collective experience to the same extent.

Here we are, 11 years later, launching "Precious Light" at the City Art Centre.

It took me four years to mull the idea over, another two to seriously commit and another three to four years of hard slog to produce 40 major collages (there are more than 70 collages in the show) and six sculptures that make up the show.

The Bible is vast in size and scope and my work in Precious Light tries to reflect that. I like to work on a massive scale, I like to be extravagant, in that scale, in the amount of effort of creation and in detail. My collages are made from thousands of images, sometimes even excruciating in their detail.

I have tackled some of the epic stories from the Bible: The parting of the Red Sea, The Last Judgement, Noah's Ark and so on. Being a contemporary artist, my interpretation of these stories is contemporary too.

Many of the stories are set against well-known cities: Paris, New York, Athens, Edinburgh, of course, and many more.

The Money Lenders is set against the backdrop of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

In The Plague of Frogs, Belfast City Hall is almost completely engulfed in a hailstorm of frogs and debris flying through the air. A calmer nativity scene overlooks the Duomo in Florence and you can find Heaven and Hell in Tokyo and Istanbul.

Most of my images have been taken from magazines and books. The people you see in them come from all walks of life, they're rich, they're poor, they're all colours and nationalities, they come from many religious backgrounds and they populate our world today.

Of the six sculptures, two are Matchheads, one of the Devil and one of Jesus Christ.

These sculptures are made of thousands of live matches and will be burned in live performances. The act of burning does not destroy the work but is in fact an act of creation. The sculptures remain completely intact but they lose their colour in the fire and emerge a more sombre shades of black and grey and age a hundred years in a few seconds.

There are two other main sculptures in the show: Golgotha - my version of Calvary includes three nine-feet-tall figures made with coathangers crucified against three tripod structures - and Die Harder - a nine-feet-tall figure of Jesus Christ also in coathangers which is crucified on the wall of the gallery.

The show opened on Saturday and work still goes on. I have moved my entire studio from London to the third floor of the gallery where we are working on one final collage - The Last Supper - which we will unveil at on September 20.

I will be working in the studio. It is great for me, I get to stay in Edinburgh and catch the Festival and I am looking forward to working in amongst an international and Scottish public.

David Mach - Precious Light: King James Bible, A Celebration, 1611-2011, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until October 16