CHRCH is the New Era of East London's Tattoo Community
Written & Direction: Izzy Bee Phillips | Shot Edit & Grade: Soph Buckley | Writing Edit & Starring: Carré Kwong Callaway | DOP assistant: Yanna Stavrakakis | Makeup: Grace Alicia | Makeup Assist: Katie Masters | Additional Wigs: Necia Hair Styling | BTS & Styling: Harriet Brown | Starring & Studio Management: Mabel Dentini
Starring Tattoo Artists: Mara Dentini | Robyn Topps | Jodie Hills | Sid Heavens | Giorgia Carlini
Other artists from the studio we would love to mention some of whose work is featured: @tokyobaby, @pallidangst, @fleshxlillies, @cherrygurlgemz, @goodboytats, @ronniwink, @portal_archive_, @mollygpokes, @liz.hell, @jessyoungnails, @fredriha, @five.kilo.cat, @elises_pokedpieces, @kiloblight, @alleykat.tattoo, @mp3_playa, @soell___, @flesh.fiction, @bibbinails, @killa.kel, @Crightfime, @Astrodtattooes
My name is Izzy Bee Phillips, and I'm a musician and artist who recently embarked on a new quest of tattooing on Fridays.
Surprisingly, it's been a side quest of a lifetime, equally terrifying in its permanence as thrilling in a tribalistic sense. My fascination with its parallels to music, and the strange way it exists as a trade of trends, has helped me understand the human experience more deeply. It also leaves me perplexed.
Tattoo artists are like micro pop stars now; they have their own self-grown following, multidisciplinary talents, and frankly are disrupting the trad landscape. No one is safe, but everyone's idea has a space in the ring.
In the Tattoo sphere there is a lot of moaning about the over-saturation out there; well, sorry, but hi that's me. I am the saturation. And I fucking love it.
I'm an artist moving into this realm after touring internationally in both shit pubs and arenas for 15 years, and I can't help but notice the dizzying difference in how artistic value is assigned to you. No hoop-jumping queries of "would I recognise your songs?" Or "are you signed to a major?" No one has to calculate a perceived sense of worth. Are you a real musician? Nobody is sure. Are you a real tattoo artist? Well if someone is paying you for a tattoo then, yes.
Nowadays, music is disposable; yet, everyone and their dog wants to flex about their tattoo collection. As a result, my value as an artist is set in stone, as it is in skin. Forget my band topping the charts, I finally exist…
Last year I found myself joining the team at CHRCH. CHRCH is the new era of East London's tattoo community. It’s a studio that specialises in fine line, hand poke, greyscale, tooth gems and nail design but set to the styling of your Catholic granny's doily-smothered decor. It’s female run with 9 stations, an inclusive team of 20 plus artists and decent disability access. There’s calm music, natural light, soft chatter, a lot of custard creams and an espresso machine constantly bubbling away in the background. Oh and if you are wondering where those viral pins of tabby wearing goth girls with embroidery style tattoos started. It’s here.
“Gone are the days of damp trad dungeons with screaming coil machines and half-dressed bald men slathering nappy creams on dripping ink. No shade to the pocket watch sleeve lads out there, but it's time to introduce CHRCH.”
I stumbled my way into CHRCH one day, as I knew a few artists I loved who went there after my last studio closed. As soon as I walked in, I felt a kind of magnetic pull, like when you join a band for the first time and sense you've met your people. I'm autistic and couldn't help but think this is where I am supposed to be, a feeling I have felt maybe twice in my life. About a year later, I asked my studio manager, Mabel (who would be perfectly suited to run an Italian drug cartel in her sleep) if she vetted the artists who requested to join. She shook her head and told me there are no rules at the gates of entry for CHRCH. Well, how could it be that this collective team was so well curated? I believe it's that magnet thing: it sucked together the right people. As for the magnet herself, I realise it's Mabel's sister, Mara (aka Come_to_Sister). She makes the magic potion, and more specifically, she is the Italian hand-poke artist who imagined it all up. At CHRCH, Mara is the mother superior and the silent leader of freaks.
“A badly written horror of nuns, hoes, dealers, and baddies plotting a structural demise with a chihuahua and a tattoo cult. Just like CHRCH, the characters are disrupting the old ways.”
Mara made CHRCH as to be inclusive, light filled and creative space with homage to her and Mabel’s catholic Italian family. What started as just a small team of herself and one artist quickly exploded into a collective of 20+ artists. Then she needed Mabel’s, I hate to say boss-style energy to help lead the congregation home. The studio aesthetic of crosses, rosaries and 1800s portraits of Jesus are set in contrast with its hackney concrete. The converted gallery walls are filled with soft chatter of people who come in hoards to fulfill their soft/hard and queer expressions of Identity..
This series is a surreal celebration of the collective in a light that extends beyond the day-to-day practice of the people and the place. It's CHRCH cinema, and maybe tinted with my own perspective. Inspired by the 1971 Ken Russell film "The Devils" and starring members of the CHRCH team, we worked together to create character-driven extensions of each person, set to my own fantasy plot. A badly written horror of nuns, hoes, dealers, and baddies plotting a structural demise with a chihuahua and a tattoo cult. Just like CHRCH, the characters are disrupting the old ways. It's the movie I imagine the male gaze would make about us, with all of us cast as villains. But if everyone is a witch, who is the hero? Here at CHRCH, it's all of us actually - the neuro-cunty.
Happy Halloween with love and darkness,
