Hand Poked No Electricity: Stick and Poke Tattoo Culture

Hand Poked / No Electricity is a love letter to stick and poke tattoo culture and is a work of art in itself. Not only an artists handbook but a resource book, a history book and a visual feast of everything single colour. Since the dawn of time people have been using needles and sticks, whatever comes to hand, to push ink into their skins to make tattoos. Away from the cul-de-sac of reworked tattoo traditionalism, hand-poking has been free to experiment and play. At the forefront of this movement stands Sarah Lu Needle and Chopstick. In stylistic terms hand-poking can be seen in terms of Before Sarah Lu or After Sarah Lu. Sarah has pulled hand-poking screaming and kicking out of its infancy and thrust it into the cold, hard glare of 21st century aesthetics.