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The work of SACHI MIYACHI 

   The work of Sachi Miyachi consists mainly of three-dimensional installations, drawings and performances. Many of her works embody models of 'operational strategies' originating from the function or dysfunction of a social environment - for instance, the relationship of a cleaning lady and her cleaning cart to the functioning of an airport. Miyachi is inspired by the conflicting relationship between environment, technology and the human and how these relationships delimit the efficiency of an urban structure.
  What becomes fundamental to Miyachi's practice is a combination of memory (both visual and narrative) and her use of scale, craft and material. In her recent work she has made very large scale models of cleaning instruments - such as a spray bottle, a bucket and a mop – these are naked structures made from strips of wood, like delicate skeletons, fragile and transparent. The architectonic quality of the larger works and the ability to literally 'see through' them makes their site specificity even more vital to their reading. The work imbricates the place where it is shown; the Cleaning Cart for instance, becomes some twisted monument to a controlled urbanity.
  Although she is dealing with very 'present' issues the processes she employs are incredibly lo-tech, although highly skilled. What also becomes reflected in the work is not only her response to the world she finds herself consumed by, but a personal control, a ritualistic and obsessive making in an attempt to physicalize and bring form to one's own mental archive.
  However, a model-like quality is also present in other more autonomous works. Sometimes she creates small depictions of processes of decay and renewal, in order to represent a metamorphosis of memories. In this way her work remains responsive, ranging from intimate to formal, from situational to autonomous, and from sculptural to performative.

January, 2009

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