When Noah's Ark landed in Edinburgh: David Mach unveils religious-themed exhibition

IT IS a Biblical vision which has turned Paris, Tokyo and Disneyland into Hell, envisages Athens and Istanbul as Heaven, and brought Noah and his ark to one of Edinburgh's most famous beauty spots.

• Arthur's Seat forms an instantly recognised background to Noah's Ark, one of the key artworks in artist David Mach's latest exhibition

One of Scotland's best-known artists has unveiled the fruits of almost a decade's work, with a vast religious-themed exhibition set to become one of the major talking points of this year's Edinburgh Art Festival.

It includes huge depictions of the Crucifixion made out of coat-hangers, the faces of Christ and Satan made from match-heads and more than 40 complex collages depicting Biblical scenes such as the Towers of Babel, Adam and Eve and the Parting of the Red Sea.

About 1,000 images cut from newspapers and magazines collected by David Mach have been carefully put together for the collages, which depict a plague of locusts descending on New York, how the Last Judgment would play out in Cologne, and Jesus walking on water off the shore of Cape Town. Arthur's Seat is instantly recognisable in the backdrop of the Noah's Ark collage.

• Profile: David Mach, artist

City of Edinburgh Council has devoted every floor of its main gallery, the City Art Centre, to the exhibition, which has been timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible.

Its most controversial features are the matchstick heads of Christ and Satan, which Mach will set light to on separate occasions during the run of the exhibition, which opens on Saturday and runs until 16 October.

The prospect has already come under fire from Christian campaign groups and raised concerns from councillors, with the local authority paying about 115,000 to stage the exhibition.

Mach, who admits he is not religious, said: "I've been working on the exhibition solidly for the last three to four years and was trying to pull it together for another three or years before that, but I've really been thinking about it for the best part of the past decade.

"It's definitely the biggest exhibition I've ever done and it's been a real slog over the last few years. Some of the collages took months to complete, which was far too long and I got quicker as time went on.

"A lot of my work seemed to be pointing towards the Bible and religion with its dramatic, apocalyptic nature, although I am not religious.

"I didn't study the Bible at all for the exhibition, it was really based on my own knowledge gained from the Scottish education system. Whether we like it or not, we were all taught a fair bit about the Bible in those days."Mach said he had travelled to a number of locations around the world trying to find a suitable backdrop for his collages, but insisted cities had not been deliberately matched with specific scenes from the Bible.

"Really, any city anywhere in the world could have been used for any of the scenes. It maybe came down to the colour of the sky in the background.

"The key thing is everyone cut out from a magazine or newspaper is an everyday person doing an everyday thing."

The entire third floor of the gallery has been devoted to a working artist's studio where Mach and his team will be working on a "colossal" version of The Last Summer, which will be unveiled on 20 September.

Around the same time the head of Christ will be set alight while the Devil will go up in flames next Thursday.

The Christian Institute campaign group has attacked the stunts, with spokesman Mike Judge saying: "This is typical of everything Christians have come to expect from local authorities' attitudes to Christianity."

However, Deidre Brock, the city council's culture leader, said: "We are incredibly excited to play host to this mindboggling array of stunning works."