About Northern Print Biennale

Northern Print Biennale will be the first major event for international printmaking in the UK since Bradford British International Print Biennale almost 20 years ago. So much has happened in printmaking since then and now is a timely and exciting opportunity to recognise and reward artists whose work in all mediums encounters print.

Around Table at Northern Print2009 is a great year for printmaking in the UK with a feast of events taking place across the country. It sees not only the launch of this inaugural event, but also the international print conference IMPACT 6, hosted by University of the West of England in Bristol, the re-opening of the new Glasgow Print Studio and Lucy Skaer, an artist for whom print is a central part of her work, being shortlisted for the Turner Prize.

There are two elements to Northern Print Biennale. The 2009 Print Awards are the open exhibitions at Northern Print, Hatton Gallery and Laing Art Gallery, and Print City which brings together venues across NewcastleGateshead to celebrate their relationship to print.

When devising the 2009 Print Awards, we purposefully didn’t define ‘print’. The call for entries invited ‘all artists whose work encounters print’ to submit. We received a tremendous response from over 800 artists in 32 countries. This gave the panel the opportunity to select an exhibition that has both breadth and depth. The exhibition will delight with the mastery of traditional processes and new techniques, as well as challenge our ideas of what a print might be. More importantly, the exhibition will show that printmaking is not essentially about technique – but about ideas and their communication.

Our three selectors were also asked to invite one artist each and we were immensely pleased when Louise Bourgeois, Daryl Waller and Richards Woods accepted this invitation.

Supporting artists to make prints is at the heart of Northern Print and Northern Print Biennale. In some ways, print is a kind of meeting point for different sorts of artists and indeed designers, a place from which they can come and go whenever they need. This is what gives it such richness.

Yet perhaps it is this versatility, this ability to bend to each artist’s needs, its multiplicity and accessibility that means that print is rarely celebrated in its own right.

Northern Print Biennale is the platform for print to take the centre stage.

Anna Wilkinson
Director
Northern Print