Jo Waterhouse
(Laurence King)
These days, everyone has a tattoo. With television dedicating shows to them, celebrities showing them off at every opportunity and colourful arms, legs and everything in between on view everywhere, it would be easy to dismiss them as the latest fad. But what happens when tattooists feel their on-skin work limits them and their art? Well, this is the book to answer that questions, showing the artists’ work off-skin.
The foreward, written by Jesse Lee Denning, makes an important point right from the off – tattoos began as an artform outside the norm, we shouldn’t be looking at reality TV for it, but instead should consider their importance in cultural terms. Author Jo Waterhouse picks up the baton by discussing in her introduction the differences in working on and off canvas whilst pointing out that there are some tattooists whose on-skin work still heavily influences their work off it.
The majority of the book is a brilliant showcase of selected artists’ work in glorious colour. Each artist has their own page of answers to various questions, some with quotes, which gives a nice insight into how they view their own work. But it is the art that takes centre stage varying from more traditional styles by Mandie Barber and Lola Garcia, Angelique Houtkamp‘s vintage works, Japanese influenced art by Matt Hunt and the hyper-realistic Cody Meyer.
Having the chance to look through numerous pieces of art and see how tattooing has both been worked into it or the complete opposite, as Regino Gonzales does so that “you’re not art being directed by your canvas”, is a joy with this book. Even those not head-over-heels with tattooing will dig it.
Abjekt.