Made To Suit — No Brief. No Client. Just the Work.
Made to Suit is five years old and getting harder to ignore. The exhibition putting tattoo artists on the wall, not behind the machine.
Walk into Made to Suit and the first thing that gets you isn't the quality of the work.
It's the scale.
Life-size canvases, framed and hung floor to ceiling, each one shaped like a human body. Dozens of them, side by side, filling an entire wall. Every single one made by a tattoo artist. Every single one made without a client sitting in a chair, without a placement to work around, without anyone wiggling, asking for a break every thirty minutes, or changing their mind about the design at the last second.
Most people who wander in off the street don't realise that until they're already standing in front of it. That moment is, more or less, the whole point.
Benji Tobin (@benjit73) has been tattooing for 28 years. He's spent 15 of them also painting — quietly, seriously, building a body of work that now sits at over 250 original pieces. He works privately and travels as a guest artist. He co-founded Made to Suit with his then studio partner Dan Johnston (@dan_tatz). The origin story is almost painfully simple.
"MTS came about by myself and Dan talking about buying some large paper because I'd always wanted to paint a bodysuit," Benji says. "We talked about it multiple times in the studio and the more we talked about it the more interest we had. It went from two of us to four, then six, then twelve, then more."
The first exhibition in 2022 had 19 artists. All local. All Gold Coast. Benji remembers hanging the first eight pieces and stepping back. "We were both like — wow, we are onto something here." They were not wrong. By 2025 that number had grown to 60 suits from across the country.
This year — the fifth — there were 34. Fewer than last year. Benji is straight about why. His co-founder Dan and his family had a rough twelve months. The exhibition nearly didn't happen at all.
"This year almost didn't happen," he says. "I was a bit sceptical about taking on the role of curating the whole exhibition on my own so I didn't start until late."
Well… It happened. And the smaller number wasn't a weakness. "I think having 34 pieces, they all got the attention they needed. The variety and versatility of styles this year was excellent. The standard was next level."
He's not wrong. Every year the work gets better. This year was no exception.
The format is simple. Each artist gets a large sheet of paper with a life-size body template lightly printed on it — male or female, their choice. From there, anything goes. Style, medium, subject matter. None of it is prescribed. The only brief is the shape.
Hung in a gallery setting, no tattooing anywhere nearby, the result tends to catch people off guard.
"MTS is specifically made for artists to produce the art they are the most comfortable making — and to show the public that tattoo artists don't just make tattoos," Benji says. "There are so many talented tattoo artists out there that never get their art seen in a way you can see at Made to Suit."
He holds it at Miami Marketta deliberately. People wander in off the street. Some came for dinner. Most of them don't realise until they're already inside that everything on the walls was made by tattooers. "Whether you're into fairies or flaming skulls you're gonna find something," Benji says. "Everyone that comes and sees it seems to have a favourite."
That's what Made to Suit does, quietly, two nights a year in a busy Gold Coast venue. People walk in for dinner and leave thinking differently about tattooers.
Every piece from this year's exhibition — and every year before it — is available as a print through the Made to Suit website. Sizes run from A3 through to A0, with originals also available. Proceeds go directly to the artist and help fund the next exhibition. If something on that wall stopped you, you can take it home.
Luke — @lame.mode, six years tattooing and recently joined Hunter and Fox Tattoo (@hunterandfox_tattoo) in Sydney — A traditional bodysuit rendered like an old painting you'd find on the wall of a classic walk-in shop. Nobody actually painted them at that scale back then. Luke thought that was a good enough reason to try.
"It was very daunting at first seeing how big the paper was," he says. "But it was great having the freedom to choose the designs I liked the most without client input — so everything was how I had envisioned it in my head."
Windsor and Newton Indian ink. Black pencil. Coffee stain over everything. Visible from across the room. As for what he wants someone standing in front of it to feel: "I want them to feel like they could get their whole body tattooed by me."
Reasonable goal.
Briar Celeste — @briar.celeste.art, Gold Coast, tattooing since 2017 and full time since 2019 — is back for her second year. Last year it was an earth and Mother Nature theme. This year, a mythical deep sea world. She works in oil paint, layering each section three to four times. Her influences are Julie Bell, Boris Vallejo and Alphonse Mucha. She came to Made to Suit after Benji spotted one of her paintings on Instagram and told her to enter.
"I still remember going to the second-ever exhibition and being completely blown away by the artwork," she says. "I couldn't wrap my head around how people could be so incredibly talented."
A few years later, she was one of them. She was filled with self-doubt. She entered anyway. "I'm so bloody glad I pushed through."
The no-brief format does something specific to her. "It quiets all the open tabs in my head and brings me a sense of peace that very little else can." She went through five to ten different concepts before settling on the one she made. "Even just that time spent trying different poses or creatures was extremely exciting — it felt like the opportunities were endless."
For anyone sitting on the fence: "If you've been thinking about entering, I'd absolutely encourage you to give it a go."
Then there is Riesa, @riesa_tattoo. Four years tattooing, resident artist at Joya Tattoo Collective (@joya_tattoocollective) in Sydney. Host of the Tat Chat Podcast. Her relationship with this year's piece is best understood through one number.
Three Hundred.
Nearly 300 hours, that's how long she spent on this submission alone. Across both her 2025 and 2026 pieces the total is close to 600 hours of active work. Not design time. Just sitting down and doing it.
The medium is pointillism. Fine liner pens from 0.05mm to 0.8mm. Thousands of individual dots building into a midnight forest ecosystem — two owls in flight as the main piece, a snake stalking mice below, a rabbit watching. Prey and predator.
"I am always drawn to this concept — showing both prey and predator — as I think it best describes the natural world," she says.
The piece pulls from Agnes Miller Parker, a British illustrator and engraver whose animal studies from the 1930s carry more emotional weight than most wildlife art gets close to. Riesa's favourites are The Challenge (1934) and Fox (1940). Both are about survival. So is this.
"The villain in this scene may be the snake but I would like the viewer to understand its natural purpose and ambition to survive, alongside every other creature."
She went through five to ten concepts before this one landed. The deadline got it finished. And finishing it changed something.
"I have never felt so deeply connected to one of my own pieces. And because of that it has made me feel a million times better about myself as an artist."
Six hundred hours. Not a bad trade.
Made to Suit is five years old. The queue to be involved keeps getting longer. Benji wants international artists. A high-end gallery. A national tour. None of it sounds far-fetched anymore.
"Until people don't want to do it anymore — that's when we will stop," he says.
He submitted this year too, despite running the whole thing largely alone. A samurai fighting a koi, Sailor Jerry flashcards woven through the suit, big and bold and bright. Twenty-eight hours. His eighth bodysuit. "It's kind of become somewhat normal for me to paint bigger stuff reasonably quick," he says. Eight suits in. Fair enough.
This weekend, Made to Suit is at the Sydney Tattoo Expo — booth 37 and 38, bottom floor, every artist's Instagram on display next to their work. If you're going, find it. Follow the handles.
And find The Spare Room. Benji's first solo exhibition — a curated selection from the 250-plus originals he's built across 15 years of painting alongside tattooing. On display throughout the Sydney Tattoo Convention weekend.
Twenty-eight years tattooing. Fifteen years painting. Five years building Made to Suit from a conversation about large paper into something worth travelling for.
Not a bad body of work.
Made to Suit (@made_to_suit_) is at the Sydney Tattoo Convention (@sydneytattooconvention) this weekend — booth 37/38, bottom floor. Benji Tobin's (@benjit73) solo exhibition The Spare Room runs throughout the weekend at the same event.
Featured artists: Luke (@lame.mode), Briar (@briar.celeste.art), Riesa (@riesa_tattoo)
