alexbinnie.com 
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I vividly remember seeing the rough tattoos on the boys 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 over 40 years and making them for around 30. 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. Finally, the lease being up, I relocated permanently to Brighton where I own and run 1770.
For now I’m on an extended sabbatical from “active service” - I feel I’ve done my bit for tattooing, and as much as I still love it, I’m happier working in mediums that don’t feel pain or talk back! But although I’m not actually putting ink into skin I still feel I’m a tattoo artist, the life and culture surrounding the art form informs much of what I do, and I feel supported and very much a part of the worldwide tattoo community that has given me so much over the last few decades. Although I went to art school in the early 80’s , and felt from a young age that I wanted to be an “artist”, it was with tattooing that I really found my home.
After art school, where I made installations and did performances, I made music, performing and recording on London’s Industrial music scene. By the mid 80’s I was working as a medical illustrator in 3 of London’s teaching hospitals; that period continues to inform my work now. During my few years in Los Angeles 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. Printmaking became my primary medium outside of tattooing from the early 2000’s. I enjoy the disciplined approach that is in some ways similar to tattooing. Much of the work is an expansion of my tattoo ideas, a place for me to experiment without the constraints of a client brief. All the work is made 100% by me (no computers) much of it printed on a Columbian printing press made in 1833. I enjoy feeling part of a long art tradition stretching back hundreds of years, in the way I feel a part of the tattoo tradition which goes back thousands!
Now, as someone into middle age, with a happy and largely “successful” career as a tattoo/artist behind me, I reflect on what is important. Why make art, what does it mean, how do I go forward from here, what are my priorities? Being creative continues to make me happy, simple. To spend time in the studio is time well spent, living moment by moment, making creative decisions unencumbered by thoughts of a destination. Both tattooing and printmaking thrive on being boundaried; painting, my most recent practice, is more open, the boundaries are looser, the goal more elusive. My main interest remains the human body; it feels valid, compelling and exciting as a subject. Something we share, something we can all relate to and somewhere for me to continue to explore in all its variety and complexity. I’m excited to see where this journey takes me.
Thanks for reading and looking
Alex 2021
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
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