91cm x 62cm x 10cm

Cotton canvas, timber, foam and found objects

Pony Ride is part of Dean’s Memory Lines series, in which sections of a single vintage canvas caravan annex are folded, reshaped and combined with found objects. Here, elements from a vintage children’s toy sit alongside a bold painted numeral 3, recalling childhood, play and the graphic language of signs and ticketwriting. Stitching, seams and eyelets remain visible, allowing the material’s former life to coexist with a new composition shaped by memory, colour and graphic form.

Dean Stewart is an artist and designer based in Ballina in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia.

Dean works with found objects and reclaimed materials, creating contemporary assemblages that explore form, place, memory and the histories held in everyday things.

His background in interior design, visual merchandising and signwriting continues to inform his practice. An attraction to architecture, graphic form, typography and spatial composition can be seen throughout his work, from the way individual elements are ordered and repeated to his use of colour, line, symbols and numerals.