Untitled

Without a descriptive title, this untitled work by Joanne Madeley sits within her practice of contemporary mokuhanga produced in the United Kingdom. The Japanese water-based woodblock method, distinct from Western oil-based relief printing, relies on [washi](/glossary/washi) paper, pigments mixed with rice paste (nori), and impressions taken with a [baren](/glossary/baren) rather than a mechanical press. Untitled works in this idiom frequently allow tonal and textural concerns — [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations, the visible grain of the cherry or shina block, layered transparency — to take precedence over narrative subject matter, an approach common among practitioners trained through the International Mokuhanga Conference network. Madeley's selection for the IMC juried international exhibition in Nara in 2021 placed her among a generation of British printmakers adapting the technique outside its Japanese context, alongside artists working through London-based mokuhanga workshops and university printmaking departments. Untitled prints by contemporary practitioners in this lineage often function as studies in the medium itself, foregrounding the slow registration of multiple blocks and the absorbency of kozo or gampi fibres rather than the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) or [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) subjects associated with the historical Edo-period tradition.