IF ANY region of Britain should host a major print exhibition, then surely it should be the North East, which gave the world Thomas Bewick.

That was the thinking of Anna Wilkinson, director of Northern Print, the printmaking studio and gallery based in Newcastle’s Ouseburn Valley.

There were no dissenting voices two years ago when the Northern Print Biennale arrived on the scene, attracting submissions for exhibition and competition from around the world.

At the weekend it duly returned, but this time called the International Print Biennale.

“We wanted to show it wasn’t a northern version of something that happens in London but that this is it for the whole of the UK and there isn’t another one,” explained Anna.

“We always wanted it to have international scope.”

This year’s biennale attracted fewer entries from more countries, which Anna put down to the economic situation.

Nevertheless, more than 600 artists did enter and the list was whittled down by a panel of judges to the 44 whose work you can see on show at the Laing Art Gallery, the Hatton Gallery and Northern Print itself until November 19.

At the weekend various prizes were presented to those whose work caught the judges’ eyes.

The £5,000 Northern Print Award went to Japanese artist Katsutoshi Yuasa, who studied at the Royal College of Art in London and is based in Tokyo.

Influenced by words and photographs, Yuasa’s work is described as “a metaphor of a story, a myth or a historical fact, but unsettled”.