David Spriggs First Wave is a monumental spatial painting composed of ninety transparent layers, each hand-painted to reveal a blood-red colour tsunami frozen in mid-surge. Installed first inside a former fishing-net warehouse for the Oku-Noto Triennale in Suzu, Japan. The wave appears to gather into a luminous crest, saturating the gallery with diffused reflected light, transforming colour from surface into atmosphere and turning vision into encounter. It is an over-whelming experience of colour. Rooted in colour-field painting, Light and Space experiments, and post-minimalist installation, Spriggs extends these legacies by treating transparency as both medium and structure. As visitors move, densities of red painted pigment align and separate, creating a unique experience.
Spriggs conceived First Wave during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the work confronts the anxiety of an unseen threat. The powerful wave never breaks, yet its poised mass suggests imminent force, reflecting the global mood of the time.
Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty noted that perception is always embodied; First Wave proves the insight by folding viewers into its intense red field, making physical presence essential to seeing. Red signals blood and danger imbuing the installation with quiet unease and relationship with the body.
The title First Wave recalls Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa, produced during Japan’s Sakoku period of enforced isolation. A parallel isolation shaped this piece: it premiered at the Oku-Noto Triennale in Suzu, Japan, but because of the pandemic lockdowns the artwork was not seen by the artist himself or the public, and remained unseen until its 2025 exhibit at the Penticton Art Gallery, Canada.
