60cm x 100cm x 10cm

Cotton canvas, thread, timber and wire

Ruffle is part of Dean’s Memory Lines series, made from folded and reassembled sections of a vintage canvas caravan annex, with its original stitching, seams and eyelets retained as part of the composition. Reclaimed timber and wire introduce more rigid, architectural elements alongside the softness of the canvas. The work explores how ordinary materials retain traces of their former purpose, and how reshaping them can bring forward new associations while preserving a sense of memory and familiarity.

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.