
IMC 2024 Echizen submission
by Jana Bareham
- Medium:
- Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
- Image courtesy of
- IMC 2024 Echizen
Description
This print represents Bareham's contribution to the juried exhibition mounted as part of the International Mokuhanga Conference 2024, held in Echizen, the [washi](/glossary/washi)-producing region of Fukui Prefecture. Selection for the IMC exhibition follows an international open call and signals recognition by the conference's curatorial process, which gathers practitioners working in the water-based woodblock tradition from across the global mokuhanga community. The Echizen setting carries direct material relevance: the region has produced washi for over 1,500 years, and works exhibited there are typically printed on locally-made papers whose long fiber structure is suited to the repeated [baren](/glossary/baren) pressure and water-soluble pigments characteristic of mokuhanga. Submissions to the IMC juried exhibition span figurative, landscape, and abstract approaches, but share a technical commitment to hand-cut blocks, hand-mixed [sumi](/glossary/sumi) or pigments bound with nori, and hand-burnished impression rather than press printing. As an England-based artist, Bareham's inclusion places her within the network of European practitioners sustaining the technique outside its country of origin.
