alexbinnie.com 
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I vividly remember seeing the rough tattoos on the lads that worked the fairground that came through our small town when I was a boy. Soon after I had my first and have now been collecting tattoos for 50 or so years and making them for around 40. After art school I started making tattoos in the late 80’s in an artist’s squat in Bloomsbury, London. After a stint in Los Angeles in the early 90’s honing my craft in the then infant tattoo scene I came back to the UK and started Into You Tattoo in Clerkenwell, London in 1993. We were the first fully custom tattoo shop in the UK, and been described as “London’s seminal tattoo institution”. We had a run of 23 amazing years, I was very fortunate. In 2005 I started a second shop in Brighton - 1770. Finally in 2016, the London lease being up, and London increasing expensive and corporate, I closed Into You and relocated permanently to Brighton continuing to run 1770 till 2025. The lease being up there I was done with being a “boss” and running a business.
I’ve always seen myself as an artist rather than just a tattooer. Much as I love tattooing its just one of the mediums I’m happy working within. At art school in the early 80’s I made performance and installation works and then made music and performed on London’s Industrial music scene. By the mid 80’s I was working as a medical illustrator in 2 of London’s teaching hospitals. During my 3 years in L.A. in the early 90’s I was lucky to meet and tattoo some figures from the underground art scene, notably Ron Athey who I performed with regularly around the world for several years. More recently I’ve been a printmaker, trying my hand at screen-printing, etching, wood and lino cuts, I’m happy to see many of my prints in tattoo shops around the world. Although I’ve done some painting, indeed I had a successful show in L.A. in 2023, I’ve largely avoided traditional fine art media and have been playing recently with more crafty areas like embroidery, pyrography and decorating furniture. I’m up for anything and bore easily, who knows what I’ll try next!
Although I no longer own a tattoo shop (1770 continues under new ownership) I’m happy to feel a part of the family there and the larger worldwide tattoo community. Tattooing has given me so much. It gave me a strong sense of identity when I needed it as a young man, it allowed me to travel and meet some great people, it gave me the time to explore so many other artforms. It enabled me to raise my two beautiful kids, and meet my gorgeous wife. Tattooing has changed so much in the 50 or so years I’ve been captivated by it, it feels a very different animal now. Back in the 70’s it seemed like the art of the outlaw and I just loved the shock tactics of declaring to my peers that I was to become a tattoo artist! Now it feels so mainstream, just everyone seems to have one, but it hasn’t ruined it for me, just changed and like me, grown up. Tattoos are now for everyone, not just “kings and criminals” as before. And why not? If it’s a beautiful thing then why should it be just for the few? For now I’m kicking back and enjoying being older, wiser? and happier. I’m also making some smaller tattoos if people ask, tattooing is about the people and its great to meet, chat and mark some skin when I get the chance.
Looking back what I’m most proud of are what my two shops Into You and 1770 achieved and how I nurtured the artists that worked there and made us a true “tattoo family”. I can say with confidence that Into You was a powerhouse of raw new talent and ideas. From Curly, my very first “ lieutenant” who helped me form the tribal aesthetic, then Xed Le Head (RIP), Duncan X, Jason Saga (RIP), Tomas Tomas, Tas, and many others, all had strong, original ideas which they developed at Into You under my watchful and proud eye. 1770 had many talents too, thanks especially to Treubhan and Capro. My shops have in many ways been my real home, a place to meet, work, play and share. So thank you all - fellow artists, clients, the wider tattoo community, its been a wonderful ride and it’s not over just yet!
Thanks for reading and looking
Alex 2025
A brief history of Into You
“Tattooing is not a job, and Into You is not a business”
Into You Tattoo was started in October 1993 by myself - Alex Binnie and piercer Teena Marie. I had known Teena a few years by this time, by the late 80’s we had both begun plying our trades from squats in London, Teena in Hackney, me in Bloomsbury, just down from the British Museum. We had both been pierced and tattooed by the legendary Mr Sebastian and it was he who brought us together. This was a time when the tattoo/piercing/body art scene was in it’s infancy. Around 1990 I started working in a small private studio in Clerkenwell – Clerkenwell workshops, just around the corner from where the shop was located for 23 years – 144 St John St. After just a year or so I moved to Los Angeles and tattooed out of the Gauntlet piercing shop, run by my then wife Elayne Angel. At this time Teena took over the small space in Clerkenwell workshops and pierced from there, she called it “Into You”.Teena and I kept in touch and after a while I tired of L.A. and knew that London was ready for its first proper custom tattoo and piercing shop, so Teena looked around and was the one to find 144 St John St. I moved back and Into You proper was born. Initially we only had the ground floor and Teena pierced from behind a screen in the main room, myself in the opposite corner. It was pretty basic, but it worked! After a very short time I asked Curly (who I had known and hung out with in the early Dunstable years) to come and join us, he’d only made half a dozen tattoos from home at this point, but I believed!
And that, dear reader is really it… the rest being history! After only a year and a half or so I bought Teena out, things weren’t always that smooth between us. Soon after Miles apprenticed (one of the VERY few), Neil Ahurn came for a while, and then it snowballed - Duncan, Xed, Ian Flower, Jason Saga, Thomas Hooper, Steve Herring, Tomas Tomas, Tas, Nicole Lowe, Dan Gold, Mo Coppoletta…. and many more guests and friends. Lets not forget front of house, Zoe worked the desk and then learnt to tattoo, and of course Blue, how could we forget her!
It was great fun, lots of tattoo names came by – Henk, Horiyoshi, Filip, Freddy, plus British names like Lal (of course) George Bone, Dennis Cockell. We had our share of celebrities too - Britney, Kate Moss, Boy George, Alexander McQueen. More underground names came – members of the Prodigy, Chilli Peppers, Metallica. Not that it’s really about that, but why not name drop a little!
What it’s been about is trying to do something different, certainly at the time and in London there was nothing like us. We never saw tattooing as a JOB, but a vocation, a calling, a path. And the shop was more a life raft, a meeting place, a safe haven for people like us, we never saw it as just a business. Goodness knows how we kept it together for so long, it was pretty crazy at times, but we did and it was great and thanks to everyone who came and trusted us to tattoo them. It WAS amazing! We closed because the lease was up, simple as that. The building redeveloped the whole area changed, like so much of central London. Things have their time, and our time was up. We didn’t want to dilute it by attempting to replicate it somewhere else, it would never have been the same. So life moves on and we have scattered too, it was very special to us, and I know it’s been special to many who walked through our doors. Thank you all, it was beautiful.
Reasons to tattoo (in no particular order)
a) Self expression/ self development and enquiryb) The need to earn a living and make money/ basic survival
c) Ego gratification and the desire for recognition
d) Helping others develop themselves/therapy
e) Technical mastery and exploring a medium
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SELECTED ART SHOWS
La Luz de Jesus, Los Angeles – 1992
Drawing center, New York – 1995
Horse Hospital, London – 2001 and 2007
Aomori print triennial, Japan - 2010
Royal Academy summer show, London – 2010
Last Tuesday society, London - 2011
Amsterdam tattoo museum, Amsterdam - 2012
Epidermiques, Lille, France – 2013
Tattooists/Tattooed, Museé du Quai Branly, Paris - 2014-15
Time, tattoo art today, Somerset house, London – 2014
Body Electric, Ricco Maresca Gallery New York – 2014
Tattoo, Museum of London - 2016
National Maritime Museum, Falmouth, Cornwall - 2017
Atelier Summer show, Brighton – 2021/22
Raking Lights Project Gallery, L.A. - 2023
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Tattootime, HardyMarks - 1991
Skin shows, Virgin – 1993
Pierced Hearts and True Love, Drawing Center – 1995
1000 Tattoos, Taschen – 1996
Written on the body, Reaktion books – 2000
Tattoo – bodies, art and exchange in the pacific and the west, Reaktion books – 2005
Tattoo Parlour, Outre press – 2011
Forever – The new tattoo, Gestalten, 2012
The Woodcut portraits, Kintaro press – 2012
Body Art, Thames and Hudson – 2014
World Atlas of Tattoo – Thames and Hudson - 2015
100 years of tattoo, Laurence King – 2015
London tattoo guide, Hardie Grant – 2017
TTT Tattoo, Lawrence King – 2018
Burning Bright, Raking Light - 2019