Untitled

This untitled woodblock print belongs to Yates's ongoing mokuhanga practice, in which water-based pigments are applied to carved cherry or shina blocks and transferred to dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) using a [baren](/glossary/baren). The mokuhanga method, distinct from oil-based Western relief printing, allows for translucent layered colour, soft [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations achieved by wiping pigment across the block before printing, and the absorption of ink into the paper rather than onto its surface. Untitled works within a contemporary mokuhanga practice are often exploratory — investigations of registration, colour interaction, or the visual record of the carving and printing process itself, rather than the named series and [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) formats associated with classical Japanese printmaking. Yates is part of the Australian mokuhanga community, one of the most sustained groups of practitioners working in the medium outside Japan and Europe, whose members have repeatedly been represented in the IMC juried exhibitions. The work sits within this contemporary, internationally networked tradition of water-based woodblock printing rather than within the commercial publishing structures of historical Japanese print production.