Everyone knows that Englishmen sit at home in the evenings making models of Westminster Abbey out of matchsticks. No exception to this rule, David Mach piles up thousands of books and magazines to make monumental sculptures—a sphinx, an Eiffel Tower, a reclining nude, a steam train, a Centurion tank. All are monumental but impermanent: each showing demands a laborious remake. And the very nature of Mach’s materials—mainly unsold magazines ready for pulping—hints that this is only one stage in their life. Like Jean-Luc Vilmouth, Tony Cragg, and Bill Woodrow, all Lisson Gallery artists who recycle

David Hockney’s social life seems rather like that of a talk-show host. Events, however trivial, are recorded and used as fuel for the continuation of a semipublic career. Read a book and he’ll photograph you. Relax in a chair and he’ll draw you. For goodness’ sake don’t undress; then he’ll make one sketch of you and another of your discarded clothes. How banal it all is. And with Hockney’s collusion, the media make it both banal and pretentious. My own hunch is that this has led to an acceptance of sheer lack of finish in his work; maybe it’s the vaunted homage to Picasso or the elevation of