Event

Avinit tattoo actually started in India in the Himalayas in a place called Manali back in 1995, when I was doing some drawing I wondered what I would call myself and having just done my first tattoo in a hotel room with about a dozen people watching us I figured i need to have an identity and after creating a drawing influenced by my incredible surroundings I was drawing a Psychedelic sun with flowers coming out the third eye floating down the mountain valley. I thought of the name Avinit tattoo and I then added the name and turned it into a poster and eventually used as my first Buisness card.

In 1993 I had a brief tattoo apprenticeship in Kensington market which was located in Kensington High Street .it was an indoor market and the tattoo studio was called skin by a guy called Andy Dixon at that point I didn’t know that the other guy who worked with him Mark Cassidy was is going to become a lifelong friend.

Back then my knowledge of tattoo artists in London was quite limited and was not a big list by todays standards ,there was jock at King’s Cross, Lal Hardy in Muswell Hill ,Mark Saint in Notting hill ,Rick in elephant and Castle Jack ringo In Woolwich .Rob Robinson in new Maldon ,Barry Levine in Garratt Lane . This was my knowledge at the time of tattoo artist accessible to me and I was lucky enough that there was an opening in Kensington High Street tattoo shop called Skin . So to say my apprenticeship was brief would be an understatement but I had a name to use and I was gonna use it and by chance it landed my first job with Graham Hodgson from Bexleyheath ,who was an award winning portrait tattoo artist who gave me a chance ,soon after I went to India and wound up in Goa ,I was hooked on the place and still am to present day and international tattooing and I was very lucky to have met some of the great tattooist that were also travelling at this time in 1995. One of the biggest influences I met there Andy smith who was the owner of a beach front tattoo studio in Anjuna who I went on to work with over the years . Steve Herring, who now owns I hate tattoos in Camden with his longtime partner Karina Lima also had a huge part to play in my tattooing career and life with Steve B ,Who on our first meeting had no idea we were going to spend many years working together Steve now works in Bexleyheath at Masters ink studio alongside my first boss Graham Hodgson. I had become good friends with the one time DJ and amazing tattooer who new no boundaries only what he wanted to tattoo and what music he wanted to play in this time in Goa was that way ,incredible in many ways still with a taste from the old ,hippy days and pre mobile phones and no social media and blending into the new wide eyed travellers and adventurous ravers . It what was one of the biggest melting pots of people coming together with Art music and dance and I was slap bang in the middle of it working with true artists , certainly no need for people pleasing . Other tattooers who I met in the early days include Marco Leoni who is the mastermind behind one of the early tattoo conventions ,the Bologna tattoo convention . Michelle edge (location unknown) .Louise van teylingen from Amsterdam . Little Mark from Sheffield RIP. Amar and hussein from Amsterdam ,Bernie Luther from Austria .

Non tattooers but people who put a lot into the industry and inspired me in many ways and for sure pioneers of the tattoo and body piercing scene around the world was Ricky and Colin incredible I don’t no there second names but that’s the era I come from .