INKED!

INKED!
Tattoo Taboo

Inked! is on display at Gallery East, 94 Stirling Highway, North Fremantle, ’til Saturday, February 6. Gallery East is open from 11am-5pm Tuesday to Saturday and from 2-5pm on Sundays.

Not too long after man figured out how to scribble on cave walls, the art of tattooing – scribbling on oneself – came into the picture. Mostly decoration to attract the other sex, tattooing has been around long enough to have at one point been everything our culture creates: fashion, un-fashion, spirituality, stupidity, marks of victory, marks of punishment, art, pornography... you name it, tattoos have been it at some point in human history.
So there are eras, epochs, regions and even ‘dialects’ of tattooing method and trend. The Inked! exhibition explores Japanese tattoos through the work of 19th and 20th Century master print artists whose own work captured the art of tattooing through different forms. Heavily featuring the print work of Paul Binnie and ceramic work of WA’s Amanda Shelsher, Inked! presents the beauty and depth of traditional Japanese tattooing, interpreted by western artists.
Whether art was imitating life, life was imitating art, or some fiendish combination of the two; a peculiar trend permeated Japan’s cultural relationship with tattooing. Crossing mediums, tattoos and the rising culture of tattooing were romanticised and popularised as woodblock prints – often depicting both tattoo artist and recipient during the intimate process.
“Most of the images in the Japanese prints are of Kabuki actors assuming the roles in which tattoos could be displayed,” affirms Inked! director David Forrest. “The coloured woodblock prints of Ukiyo, depicting the hedonistic life of urban society, gave ample opportunity for artists to incorporate elaborate tattoo designs on their depictions of heroes of legend, and of the Kabuki actors in the role of the urban gangs of discontented and master-less samurai, of bands of young townsmen who chose to protect defenseless commoners.”
And although it’s utterly outdated to think of tattoos in western society as being class related or the domain of the morally dubious, at one point that is exactly how they were perceived. Similarly in the Orient, different classes responded to the tattooing phenomenon differently, with many non-participants settling for a quality woodblock print. Of course for others it was a different story altogether.
”Associated closely with loyalty, special relationships and devotion, tattooing became highly valued by closely knit groups whether criminal gangs (yakuza), firemen, palanquin bearers, porters, carpenters or construction workers. These were also a rich source of inspiration for Ukiyo-e artists.
“For the merchant classes who avidly enjoyed the entertainment quarters of Edo (Tokyo) and Osaka and purchased the woodblock prints, tattoos were an exotic sight; but not something to be adopted by them.”
And much like the art imitating life thing again, the popularity and complexity of woodblock depictions of tattoos were to eventually influence and inspire the very art of tattooing they were depicting.
”As the woodblock prints acquired more colour and complexity of design, so the motifs and pigments used in tattooing grew more ambitious,” explains Forrest, who says the exhibition has helped strengthen his own understanding of the commitment and artistry involved in full-body Japanese tattooing.
With the western world currently enjoying a rise in the popularity and acceptance of tattoos – particularly traditional Japanese tattoos, whose Koi, dragons, blossoms and demons adorn a high percentage of Generation Y, both male and female – Forrest says that now seemed like the perfect time to launch Inked!.
Following a timeline that starts in ancient China, making its way to Japan in the 19th Century, then popularised and distributed through the west through 20th Century prints, Inked! is a unique look at how the endurance of art and tradition can keep art forms alive and progressing, across eras, cultures and generations.

_MIKE WAFER