toolbox

“I have collected tools and toolboxes for many years and they are a core memory from times spent with grandmother in her home and shed as well as my father in his workshop.” - Dean Stewart

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.

The yellow toolbox was found at the Ballina tip shop; Toolboxes 01 and 02 originally belonged to the artist’s grandmother 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.

For this series, I was interested in deconstructing a series of handmade, timber toolboxes, transforming them from utilitarian container to a series of planes and forms which retain a sense of the original piece yet at the same time become a layered, graphic work with strong vertical and horizonal lines.

The original aluminium tubular carry handle in Toolbox 01 is removed from it’s fixing holes and painted a striking red to contrast with the original painted timber pieces which I have sanded back somewhat to achieve the desired finish.