timber, acrylic paint, aluminium tube

96 x 55 cm

The Toolbox series reimagines old timber toolboxes—once practical, everyday objects—through a lens of memory and material transformation. Each piece has been carefully deconstructed and rebuilt, preserving traces of their original function while becoming quiet meditations on family, place, and resilience.

Toolboxes 01 and 02 originally belonged to my grandmother who lived in Crane Street, Ballina. Their forms and colours evoke strong personal memories—of her shed, her practical independence, and a childhood spent in and around that home. The soft pinks reference a cabinet owned by the artist’s mother; the green tones echo the interior of his grandmother Lillian’s house, with its swing-door garage and workbench where she mended things herself.

Though each work stands on its own, the series carries a shared sense of nostalgia—not as sentimentality, but as a lived connection to women who were capable, light-hearted, and self-reliant. These toolboxes, once built for function, now hold space for memory, presence, and quiet transformation.