By Amanda Keenan
A UNIQUE sculpture depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ has been put on display in Edinburgh’s Parliament Square.
The 9ft tall piece ‘Die Harder’ was unveiled outside St Giles’ Cathedral by acclaimed sculptor David Mach.
The Fife born artist is best known for his artwork made out of everyday items including coat-hangers, match sticks and bricks.
He spent three-and-a-half months creating the crucifixion scene through welding together 3000 coat-hangers.
He said: “This work is made of thousands of coat-hangers, we’ve teased the hooks out to points.
“It’s a material I use a lot for sculpture, so we’ve got this ‘pierced Christ’ that appears. It looks like quite a violent image and I wanted to enhance that violence in a way.
“I had wanted to wire this thing up so that it can pick up radio connections so that as you go near you can hear different languages coming through, it would be quite spooky.
“I’m doing it from the point of view of a kind of state of the world rather than just the bible itself, so it’s not just an illustrated bible, all the images are very contemporary, you will know them because you will have flipped through magazines and seen them.”
The sculpture will not be a permanent fixture on the Royal Mile and after a short stint will be moved back to Relicarte Studio in Peebles.
Mach’s new exhibition of work based on scenes from the Bible will be unveiled at the City Art Centre in Market Street next summer.
He is best known for the Big Heids sculpture visible from the M8 between Glasgow and Edinburgh.
