WHAT IT TAKES TO OPEN A DOOR

Vitor Camilo (@vktattoo_) spent three years trying to rent a room.

Not a full blown tattoo studio. Just a room.

A commercial space on the Gold Coast where he could build the studio he'd been imagining in his head since long before he had anywhere to put it.

Three years of inspections, applications and phone calls that went nowhere.

"I honestly lost count of how many times we were told no," he says.

The reasons varied. Sometimes the property owner simply didn't want a tattoo studio in their building. Other times, insurance became the problem — properties that accommodate tattoo businesses can require more specialised or premium insurance. In some cases, Vitor says, insurers even warned property owners that their existing policy could be affected or cancelled if they leased space within a commercial complex to a tattoo studio.

It's a problem tattooing doesn't talk about much. The stigma the industry has spent decades working to shed in the public eye still exists, quietly and persistently, in the commercial property market. Nobody puts it on a sign or listing. It just shows up in the 'your application was not successful'.

"Before we could even think about designing the studio, buying equipment or creating the space we had imagined," Vitor says, "one of the biggest challenges was simply finding someone willing to give us the opportunity to open it."

LiveArt Tattoo (@livearttattoo) eventually opened in Varsity Lakes in 2025.

Vitor is originally from São Paulo, Brazil. He moved to Australia nine years ago — initially for six months, to study English and tattoo while he was here.

Then life happened.

Work. Relationships. COVID. The particular gravity of a place that starts to feel like home before you've decided to make it one.

He discovered tattooing the way a lot of people from his generation did — through Miami Ink, watching it on television as a teenager and understanding for the first time that tattooing could be something more than decoration. That it could carry symbolism, story, the permanence of a decision made on the body.

"I became fascinated by the idea of it being almost like a rite of passage," he says, "where each piece represents something meaningful that a person chooses to carry on their body."

He started tattooing, spent three months as an apprentice, and not long after set up his own private room. Fast forward to Australia, Mantaro (@mantarotattoo.studio) came next — a studio he didn't just work in, but watched grow from nothing, which turned out to be its own kind of education.

"I had the opportunity to see a studio being built from the ground up, growing, evolving and adapting over time," he says.

Mantaro was Guilherme Baccarelli's studio — @bacca_ink — and for a stretch, it was where they, along with Henrique 'Ricky' Fuhrich (@fuhrichtattoo) of them worked, learned and grew alongside each other.

It's also where Vitor met the people who would eventually follow him to LiveArt.

Ricky Fuhrich worked alongside Vitor at Mantaro — a microrealism specialist from Porto Alegre, Brazil, whose precision/detail-oriented obsession with tattooing ran deep. Some of his smallest pieces took longer than work several times their size.

Johnny, who tattoos as @starxttt, came in differently.

His mother is a close friend of Vitor's partner Amanda (@as.inks), and through that connection he was recommended for an apprenticeship at Mantaro. He arrived from a small industrial city inland from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the kind of place where, as he puts it, art doesn't flow naturally. You have to look for it. You have to make it happen.

He'd grown up following his mother to art school, watching his grandmother sew, listening to his grandfather play accordion. He wasn't looking for tattooing, but it found him anyway.

"It sorta happens I guess," he says.

He referred to Mantaro his church. Bacca was his mentor. Years spent working alongside Vitor and Ricky turned into something beyond work — the kind of friendships that blur the line between professional and personal in ways that are hard to explain and easy to feel.

"I'm pretty sure they know more about me than I'd like to admit," he says.

When LiveArt became a real possibility, the question of who would be in the room wasn't a difficult one.

"My friendship with both of them was actually one of the things that pushed me towards opening my own studio," Vitor says. "Over the years we worked together, I think we really learned how to work alongside each other, respect each other, share knowledge and grow together. Somewhere along the way, that professional relationship developed into a very strong friendship. Today, I consider them family."

Opening a studio was never Vitor's plan. He's careful to say that.

What it was, was a need.

A need to work in an environment that functioned the way he believed it should — and a growing realisation that unless he built that environment himself, he would probably always be dissatisfied with something.

"I've always had a very clear vision of what an environment for concentration and artistic creation should feel like," he says.

That vision extends to things most people probably don't think about.

The lighting.

The music.

The chair — comfortable and easy to reposition throughout a session.

The workstation, organised so everything needed is within reach.

The way a client is welcomed when they walk in.

The hygiene.

The small details people might never consciously notice but that completely change how a space feels. Vitor notices all of them. That's the point.

He introduced something called 'Design Days' into his process — dedicated time set aside to develop a piece properly before anyone sits in a chair. Time to try different compositions, make decisions together, get it right before it becomes permanent.

"I don't like treating tattooing as something that needs to be rushed or decided immediately," he says. "I think helping the client understand that good work takes time makes a huge difference."

It's a philosophy that runs through everything at LiveArt. The tattoo is the most important part. But the experience surrounding it matters too.

Amanda — Vitor's partner and LiveArt's co-owner — has a more direct way of describing what running a studio actually involves.

"From the outside, a tattoo studio can look like a creative and relaxed environment," she says. "But the reality is that every artist, client, and team member has their own personality, expectations, and way of communicating."

She's also the reason LiveArt exists at all.

"I can confidently say that without Amanda, LiveArt wouldn't exist," Vitor says. "She really made it happen."

Amanda came to tattooing herself, working across studios while managing LiveArt's operations, marketing, photography and client experience. That dual perspective — artist and operator — changes how you run a room. You understand what's needed on both sides of the chair.

Varsity Lakes was a deliberate choice. Commercial and residential in balance, central to the Gold Coast, accessible without feeling like it's trying to be somewhere it isn't. The studio follows the same logic — considered without being cold, designed without being decorative.

"I want them to immediately feel that they're in the right place," Vitor says of clients walking through the door. "I want there to be a sense that everything around them has been considered and created with intention, even the details they might not consciously notice at first."

In five years, he wants LiveArt to be a reference point. Not for size or volume — for what a studio can be when it genuinely sees the people who walk into it. Clients and artists alike.

"I also want LiveArt to become a reference for tattooers as a place where they know they'll be respected, supported and genuinely valued," he says. "Tattoo artists dedicate an enormous part of their lives to developing their craft, and I believe the industry today needs to recognise and value artists accordingly."

That belief — that the people making the work deserve as much consideration as the people wearing it — is what LiveArt was built around.

It just took three years to find a landlord who'd let them try.

LiveArt Tattoo — Varsity Lakes, Gold Coast | @livearttattoo | @vktattoo_ | @fuhrichtattoo | @starxttt | @as.inks