The Great Wave

Imazu's 2015 etching and aquatint takes its title from Hokusai's Kanagawa-oki Nami-ura but reframes the canonical ukiyo-e composition through Western intaglio and her own iconography. Where Hokusai used colour woodblock with bokashi gradations and a fixed foreground-background structure, Imazu reworks the wave motif in etched line and tonal aquatint, likely monochrome or near-monochrome given the medium. The print sits in her seascape body of work and, like several of her takes on canonical Japanese imagery, treats the source not as pastiche but as a structural reference inviting recasting. The wave's claw-like crest and the encircling rhythm of the original suit the line-and-tone capacities of intaglio: hard-ground etching for the contours of spray, aquatint for the tonal mass of the swell. Made between Mokomoko (2014) and her 2017 botanical work, it sits in a productive period in which Hokusai, Hiroshige, and the broader ukiyo-e canon thread through her Melbourne practice as recurring reference points.