For months I was pondering whether I should actually go to this event or not and to be honest, the idea of seeing ink and needles left, right and centre did not really make me jump up and down. Eventually my friends ampped me up for this Exposure, with ideas such as: some of the worlds best tattooist would be there and convincing me that this would be the ideal opportunity to actually get my own tattoo.

Arriving at the CTICC I was not sure what to expect, but when I walked through those big doors I knew exactly that this was going to be very interesting event. I was hardly through them when I was dragged to a little seminar room to go and listen to Lyle Tuttle speaking about the early South African tattoo history. Interestingly enough the speaker of this intimate seminar is currently the owner of George Burchett’s tattoo shop in London. For those who don’t know, George Burchett was known as the King of tattooists also known for his South African related tattoos in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Another historic person in the tattoo world that he spoke about was Professor. John. T. Clark, which had a portrait tattoo of Paul Kruger on top of his head done by George Burchett. For anyone that is interested John Clark had a tattoo shop right here in our own mother city, Cape Town. If you want to go check it out to see whether there is still a tattoo shop, the address is as follows: 57 Aberdeen Street. Woodstock. Cape Town.

Eventually I got back to the main hall, and I started to walk around and ask for quotations and to find out which artists are still open to tattoo the weekend, and this is where I am going to be giving a big pat on the backs of the South African Tattoo stalls, because about 90% of them where all ready fully booked for the entire weekend and this was on a Friday afternoon already!! Probably one of the most interesting stalls I got was a Danish Tattoo artist, Colin Dale who had a very cavy, natural decoration to his stall that specialize in tattooing by hand in age old techniques. In conclusion for someone that new nothing about anything concerning tattoos has an entirely new respect for most of the people that have tattoos. The art of tattooing truly reflects our individuality.