Stuart Campbell
“I think we’ve started to realise we are post-geography. We can achieve really wild things from wherever we are in the world.”
Stuart Campbell is Straight Outta Cooee. As SUTU he is rockin’ in LA as an award-winning augmented reality designer, avant-garde movie producer and multimedia artist.
Graphic art from a 2016 pitch to Nickelodean
As a Burnie kid hungry for action – Stuart found design, music, film and extreme sports crossing lanes in a globetrotting crash course.
“It was actually the rollerblading that created the discipline that I applied to everything I did. Watching the videos, trying to understand how they did every single little trick. Collecting the magazines, being completely absorbed in the culture of it. The street culture and the artwork and the editing,” he says.
Burnie was an isolated place in the nineties. There was none of this new-fangled social media to augment reality and enhance a sense of connection. Everyone responded to the distance differently. Stuart describes it as a frustration and motivation.
“We felt like we were missing out constantly. Everything was happening elsewhere - but at the same time we didn’t want to let it defeat us. We were heads down and saving up our pocket money to go to Melbourne and enter competitions. We thought we were destined to be the best in the world,” he laughs.
Graphic art from a 2016 pitch to Nickelodean
Stu blading outside the Civic Centre, circa 1995
Stu in his office at Burnie Bowl, circa 1995
