Convention circuit: how tattoo expos found their voice

The first tattoo conventions were held in hotel ballrooms, with artists working from folding tables and a PA system borrowed from a wedding. The crowd was mostly other tattooers. Fifty years later the format has not changed much, which is exactly why it still works. The convention is the one place where the craft performs in public: machines running all day, work being made in front of strangers, reputations rising and falling in a weekend. For the public it is spectacle. For the artists it is something closer to a deadline with an audience. The best work at any convention is made by people who forget the crowd is there. “The convention is where the subculture checks its own pulse,” says an organiser who has run shows on three continents. “It has always been that, and it still is.”