I had my first ever tattoo done in Ponsonby, at Dermagraphic (now College Hill Tattoo Studio) almost 30 years ago.
At the time, it was headed by industry icon Phill Matthias and was one of just two shops in the area, existing happily alongside Merv O’Connor’s Auckland Tattoo Studio, at the time located on Richmond Road. There Merv was known for inking school leavers from St Pauls directly opposite, before the shop shifted to Ponsonby Road where it still remains today.
Both figureheads have since passed away, but Ponsonby still attracts those looking for an elevated tattoo experience and Stefan 'Spider' Sinclair is a local artist at the top of his game. His shop, Two Hands Tattoo, is celebrating 20 years in business, with almost 16 of those spent on Ponsonby Road.
“We outgrew the space we were in on Symonds Street and I really wanted to find something in Ponsonby,” he tells me one summer’s afternoon in the studio, adding, “I grew up in the area and my family is here and it just felt right.” One night while “randomly scrolling Trade Me” he saw the site at 127a Ponsonby Road advertised as available, and once he’d set foot inside it immediately felt right. “The natural light is amazing, and there was more than enough space for us all to work. The move to Ponsonby was the best business decision I’ve ever made as once we were here, we grew super quickly and things really took off.”
So much so that just a few short years later, Stefan also took over the space next door at 125a Ponsonby Road, where he established Flash City. Offering barber cuts and tattoo designs painted by artists working at Two Hands and a selection of their friends from around the world, it was inspired by early tattoo parlours that historically were found out back of a barber shop. As well as being an entity on its own, Flash City also frees up more space for the team and visiting artists to ply their trade. “We can now fit eight artists – nine at a stretch – at one time, which is just awesome.”
Two Hands has become renowned for its ever-changing roster of hugely talented visiting international artists, was that always part of his vision for the studio? “No, I hadn’t considered that at all,” says the founder and creative. “It wasn’t until international artists started contacting us asking if they could come through that we started offering that to our customers. To be honest, I had no plan where we opened up – I just wanted a space to tattoo in that I could create myself, with all I had ever wanted in a studio.”
Also part of the original brief for Two Hands was to establish a space that was a bit more welcoming and friendly to the general public than a lot of studios were at the time. “A lot of the parlours in Auckland then were awesome, but could be a little bit intimidating to people,” says Stefan. “A lot of them also had walls of designs but weren’t really geared towards custom tattoos as such, mainly as custom tattooing was still a relatively new concept back then. I wanted no designs on the wall, just a light, clean space.”
He laughs when he recounts going back on his word with the opening of Flash City, “Which has walls full of flash art and is definitely like a traditional tattoo shop. The two spaces are like twins in a way, just non-identical ones!”
When the team first arrived in Ponsonby, those tattooing in the inner central were few and far between, with just two other businesses in Ponsonby, a scattering in the CBD and couple on Karangahape Road. “It was such a small community back then,” he remembers, “even more so when we first opened on Symonds Street and there were probably only about 10 tattoo shops in the whole city.” Now there could be around 500 city-wide, and part of that is down to a shifting customer base as the artform gained mainstream popularity.
“When I first started tattooing it was definitely something that attracted people from the fringe elements of society,” explains the internationally celebrated artist. “It was people from the punk scene, extreme bands, people from the underworld, outlaws… people who didn’t really fit into any boxes in society at the time. Over the years, it’s got less and less taboo in society’s eyes and my clientele reflects that.”
Every year the Two Hands studio got busier and busier, “and the clientele became more and more everyday people rather than just those on the edges of society. After the freaks and outlaws came the cool young kids, and then successful creatives from the Ponsonby and Grey Lynn areas who were wanting to get their first tattoos.” Now, the Two Hands' customer could be from any walk of life, and Stefan and his team love it that way.
Another element that really made Two Hands stand out from the more traditional tattooing crowd was their poster runs, which began when they decided to go big with advertising the move from Symonds Street to Ponsonby Road. “It came about because I had a lot of friends in the fashion world who were designers, stylists and photographers, and I loved the work they were doing with New Zealand labels to raise their profile,” says Stefan. “I thought: why don’t we do something like that? I had people around me that were keen to be involved, and we put our heads together and started creating some really cool images.”
He knew that he didn’t want the campaigns to be close up images of tattoos or tattoo designs, “which can be super polarising as not everyone likes the same style of tattoos. I wanted instead to express a mood and a vibe, and we were putting out two campaigns a year before Instagram really took over as a way to show people what we were all about.”
That very first poster campaign can be seen currently around the neighbourhood advertising FOREVER, a retrospective exhibition at Studio One Toi Tū chronicling the studio’s creative endeavours from 2005 to 2025. It presents a diverse collection of works by both local and international tattoo artists, including paintings, drawings, photographs, posters, videos and installations. As well as being a fantastic show from a nostalgia viewpoint, it serves to highlight the artistic evolution of Two Hands Tattoo, offering visitors a glimpse into the studio's rich creative history.
Towards the end of the exhibition’s run, Two Hands’ annual TATTOO TIME mini convention will also take place at Studio One Toi Tū, with close to 40 international artists making the trip to Aotearoa to celebrate the milestone birthday. The event will run across three consecutive days – 14, 15 and 16 February from 11am each day – with no door charge and an explosion of creativity on display.
A month later Stefan himself will be travelling to Los Angeles, where he lives for a large portion of the year. An LA base allows him travel more easily across the US and Europe as an in-demand artist, taking the Two Hands Tattoo name to an ever-growing fanbase around the world. Any plans to grow the studio again as a result? “Hell no,” he laughs, “I’m very happy with where we’re at. We’re at the perfect size, with the perfect number of artists and the perfect team of artists right now. It just feels really good.” (HELENE RAVLICH)
TWO HANDS TATTOO, 127a Ponsonby Road, T: 09 376 6999, www.twohandstattoo.com
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