Adam McDade

• Art and Design, University of Sunderland
• Email: bf46fu@student.sunderland.ac.uk

My research is about enriching both academic understanding and professional practice of contemporary Western Tattooing. While tattooing (approached as a broad phenomenon) has been studied within an academic context from a social sciences and historical perspective, very little is understood of the discipline from the perspective of design. The research aims to present tattooing as a medium as distinct from phenomena, and to document and explore an embedded and dominant aspect of Western cultural consumption that has thus far failed to be taken seriously. Combining autoethnography and practice, my part-time research is undertaken within the internationally award winning ‘Triplesix Studios’, where I work as a tattooist. The research aims to elucidate the process of cultural production, while investigating how tattooing practice may transition into praxis.

http://adammcdade.weebly.com/beyond-the-epidermis

Supervisory Team: Dr. Manny Ling, Arts and Creative Industries (Sunderland), Prof. Mike Collier, Arts and Creative Industries (Sunderland), Prof. John Fulton, Health Sciences and Wellbeing (Sunderland).

Start Date: October 2017