Naruto Whirlpools (The Wave Coventry)

A site-specific installation at The Wave, a community arts venue in Coventry, made during the city's 2021 UK City of Culture year. The Naruto Strait, between Awaji Island and Shikoku, is known for the tidal whirlpools that form at the change of tides, and the subject has a long history in Japanese woodblock printmaking—notably in Hiroshige's Snow, Moon and Flowers [triptych](/glossary/triptych) and in his Views of the Sixty-Odd Provinces series. Imada's installation, tagged as Seascapes, takes the spiral form of the whirlpool as both image and structural device. Works in this vein typically deploy printed [washi](/glossary/washi) sheets in concentric, layered, or suspended arrangements so that the viewer perceives turbulence as a spatial phenomenon rather than a fixed pictorial subject. The pairing with the Coventry Cathedral Giant Waves project indicates a coordinated 2021 exploration of water imagery across two civic venues, drawing on the print tradition's repertoire of marine subjects and applying it to a regional British context.