Aiko Miyanaga Strata: Origins 7th October – 22nd November 2014 White Rainbow 47 Mortimer Street, London, W1W 8HJ white-rainbow.co.uk
My works change – That is not extraordinary at all. I do not intend my works to fade away:
I would like them to remain – They may not be (marble sculpture) masterpieces that will be handed down for generations, yet I would like them to sink into your mind to stay forever.
Aiko Miyanaga
Aiko Miyanaga’s practice is concerned with processes of constant change. Through an array of media that may seem delicate – thin strings of crystallised salt, the sounds of ceramic glass cracking – she contrasts material resilience with nature in flux. Her work reflects on our being and surroundings, connecting them with a larger whole, a stage in the continuous cycle of the elements. It is a practice drawing on continuous natural processes to remind us of the limits of our perception.In this exhibition, Miyanaga approaches the idea of transcendence.
Amongst the exhibited work, the Soramimisora series exemplifies key concerns of her practice, revealing what is hidden beneath that which we overlook everyday. The installation at first appears to comprise of the repeating simple forms of glazed ceramic bowls, arranged on suspended glass shelves above eye level. For this series, she returns to the original and unique glazing mixtures which allows the formation of cracks, or crazing, conventionally considered a fault in craft practice.
However, as Miyanaga explains:
Quite simply, I carefully deconstruct existing materials and forms, and reconstruct them in my own way, in a new form. This is the only way that I as an artist can question the world.
Crazing is a phenomenon that precedes fracture, occurring when the clay dries and contracts in newly fired ceramics as they are removed from the kiln and too suddenly exposed to cool air. As a glaze cracks it makes a subtle sound, unpredictable and erratic and continuing for days. Firing ostensibly fixes the clay in a state of permanence, yet in exposing and accentuating the imperfections of the process, Miyanaga suggests that what seems stable is in fact undergoing constant change.
Noise is a sign of this change, and the visible fissure at the bottom of vessels become its record: a delicate map of interlocking paths, each marking out a unique landscape. To experience Soramimimisora is to enter a heightened state of aural consciousness; similarly the gradually sublimating naphthalene pieces incorporate a process at the limit of the perceivable. Both works question the heterogeneous quality of perception: no matter how closely we listen, there is a great depth of variation in what we hear; no matter how closely we observe, there is a great depth of imagination in what we understand, and with it a renewed appreciation of our surroundings.
White Rainbow is a new gallery opening in London on Monday 6th October ” Which aims to expose contemporary artists well-known in Japan but not in the West to a wider European and UK audience”
