Hiroko Imada

Hiroko Imada is a Tokyo-born artist based in London whose practice spans Japanese woodblock printmaking (mokuhanga), painting, and large-scale site-specific installation. She has taught and demonstrated traditional Japanese printmaking techniques to British audiences for more than two decades, and is widely credited with helping reintroduce mokuhanga and related traditional Japanese arts to contemporary cultural institutions in the United Kingdom.

Imada was born and spent her earliest years in central Tokyo before her family moved to the countryside when she was three. She studied at the Suidobata Art School in Tokyo on a scholarship from 1982, then completed an undergraduate degree at Tokyo Zokei University in the Fine Art Department from 1984 to 1988, supported by three Tokyo University of Art and Design scholarships across 1985 to 1987. After moving to London she enrolled in the postgraduate printmaking programme at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, from 1990 to 1992, where she specialised in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Her 1992 degree show drew critical attention from Times art critic David Cohen, and she was awarded a British Council Fellowship that same year, alongside an Overseas Study grant supporting research at Druckwerkstatt Berlin.

Her body of independent work since the 1990s alternates between woodblock prints and immersive paper, ink, and stained-glass installations, with recurring subjects of water, sky, dance, and seasonal change. Notable projects include the Northern Light installation exhibition in Vantaa, Finland (2012), Vega, a collaboration with the Pell Ensemble (2015), Hokusai: Making Waves at the British Museum (2017), an interactive installation at Coventry Cathedral (2021), Naruto Whirlpools at The Wave Coventry (2021), and Sakura saku (Cherry Blossoms Are Blooming) at Watts Gallery in Surrey for the Edo Pop exhibition (2024). In 2025 the cherry-blossom installation travelled to the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath, and she created a faux stained-glass cherry blossom installation at The Ned in London. Her woodblock practice is reflected in bodies of work shown in solo exhibitions such as Shapes of Water (Sway Gallery London, 2018) and Metamorphoses of Water (Sway Gallery London, 2021).

Imada has held a series of long-running teaching positions in major British museums and educational institutions. She founded and has run the Japanese Woodblock Printmaking for Schools workshop programme at the British Museum since 2000. From 2008 she has taught annual Japanese art courses at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, and from 2017 she has led the Japanese Woodblock Printmaking course at the King's Foundation School of Traditional Arts (formerly the Prince's School of Traditional Arts, founded by King Charles III). Her studio history includes residencies and studios at Westminster Adult Education Institute (1993), Donnington Grove Society (1997-1998), Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College (1999), Palace Wharf Studios (1999-2014), Make Space Studios (2014-2018), and an artist residency at the Guanlan Original Printmaking Base in Shenzhen, China (2018).

Imada has produced a significant body of museum and corporate commissions interpreting Japanese print traditions for contemporary audiences. The British Museum has commissioned woodblock prints from her for its major exhibitions Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything (2021) and Hiroshige: artist of the open road (2025). Royal Collection Trust commissioned a print for Japan: Courts and Culture at the Queen's Gallery (2022), and Dr. Martens commissioned a Hokusai-inspired collaborative work in partnership with The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2022). She has also designed for Universal Pictures (a painting featured in Fast & Furious 9, 2019) and the luxury phone manufacturer Vertu (a limited-edition Aster Yosegi Wood design, 2015).

Her earlier career included extensive work in theatre design from 1986 onward, with set and costume designs for productions including the Pynes Gray Dance Group (1986), Qi Affinities (1994), Hanjo (1995), A Story of House Spirit (1995), and Arc Lamp (1998). Her solo exhibition history extends back to Gallery Lunami in Tokyo (1993) and has included shows at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Japan House in London (1996), Falmouth College of Art (1995), Darlington Art Centre (2001), Riverside Studios Gallery during the Japan 400 commemorations (2013), the Children's Art Centre Pessi in Vantaa, Finland (2015), and Watts Gallery (2024). Her work is held in the collections of the Vantaa Art Museum (Finland), the Berlin City Library, the Central Japan Railway Company, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, University College London, the British School in Rome, and the Youth Foundation in Portugal.