North/South/East/West is a new art and music project from photographer Shaun Bloodworth, designer Stuart Hammersley and Bleep.com.
The visual focus of the project is a series of photographic portraits by Bloodworth focussing on musicians from four different regions of the world – Glasgow, London, and the east and west coasts of the United States.
Bloodworth and Hammersley (Give Up Art) are best known for their work with Tempa, FWD>> and Rinse FM. After working on portraits of key movers in that London scene, they made a trip to L.A., where they snapped artists and DJs from the Low End Theory Club, Alpha Pup and Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder. The resulting portraits were first presented and exhibited as the L.A. Dope series.
From there, Bleep commissioned the duo to expand the project. They travelled to Glasgow where they focussed on Hudson Mohawke, Rustie and the guys from the Numbers, Wirebock and LuckyMe crews, and then back to the States, this time New York, capturing the likes of Kotchy, Mike Slott and Falty DL. The results were collected in the North/South/East/West, a box set produced by Bleep and featuring photos and packaging from Bloodworth and Hammersley and a CD comprised largely of exclusive tracks by the musicians involved.
Over the next couple of pages we talk to Stuart and Shaun about the project, and their practice at the intersection of art, photography and music.
Please tell us about a bit about your respective careers to date, and how you came to work together….
Shaun Bloodworth: “I’ve worked as a freelance photographer for nearly 20 years, travelling the world, being lucky enough to see some truly amazing things, firstly in magazines – which is where I met Stuart.
“We worked on a food magazine called Restaurant where he was the Art Director -it was tremendous fun, great stories, ideas-led. We hit it off very quickly. Our first music job was a favour for Dubstep Allstars 3, photographing the dubplate machines at Transition. I knew nothing of that world at that time, but grudgingly went to FWD that evening with Stu and have been hooked ever since…”
Stuart Hammersley: “I studied Graphics at the London College of Printing, and have worked professionally for about 14 years, starting in magazines and newspapers. Since I can remember I’ve also always worked evenings or weekends on other types of design projects.
“About eight or nine years ago my friend Neil Jolliffe set up a few small record labels and I started designing for them. One of them he set up with Sarah Lockhart, which was called Tempa. And then they also both set up a small club called FWD, which I also designed for…Oh, and Neil first coined the word Dubstep, for a piece XLR8R did on Horsepower Productions, fact fans!
“Then about three years ago, together with my wife Emma, I formed Give Up Art as a studio in its own right.”