Marcia Swaby
Email: m.swaby@unsw.edu.au
Supervisors: Bianca Hester, Fernando do Campo
Marcia Swaby is a British Jamaican artist and PhD candidate at UNSW, whose interdisciplinary practice spans jewellery, video, ceramics, and installation. Her research explores hapticity, decoloniality, and diasporic identity through practice-led methodologies. Her current project investigates the cultural and material significance of guanín, an ancient Caribbean alloy, as a site of embodied knowledge and ancestral memory. Marcia’s approach centres tactile making and sonic feedback as forms of resistance and relationality, challenging colonial narratives through material engagement. She was awarded the faculty Dean’s Award for her MPhil thesis Haptic Tactility, and has taught across art and design programs since 2017.
She currently serves as HDR Faculty Representative for UNSW’s School of Art & Design, co-representing with Tom Wilma. Their respective research interests—Marcia’s in embodied material practice and Tom’s in media and technology studies—reflect a shared commitment to interdisciplinary thinking and inclusive research cultures.
- Research area
- Research outputs
Re-performing Guanín: Crafting a Practice of Embodied and Materially Driven Jewellery-Making in Dialogue with Indigenous Caribbean Craft Legacies
- 2023 – Looking at Gold, Tamworth Regional Gallery, NSW
- 2023 – Looking at Gold, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney
- 2022 – Insole/Soul, Sydney Craft Week, Windowsmiths
- 2021 – Murmuration, Australian Design Centre
- 2021 – Flux (Online Video), Sydney Craft Week, Australian Design Centre
- 2020 – Change Makers, Sydney Craft Week, Australian Design Centre
- 2020 – The Cooked & the Raw, Delmar Gallery, Sydney
- 2019 – Text to Contexture, Squarepegs Studios, Sydney
- 2019 – Do You Hear the People Sing?, Metro Arts, Brisbane
- 2018 – Exegesis: Haptic Tactility (Solo), AD Space, UNSW Art & Design
- 2018 – Les Misérables’18, Kudos Gallery, UNSW Art & Design
- 2017 – Under Pressure, Figure & Two Figures, Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia
- 2017 – Jewellery: as archaeological emblems, Sydney Craft Week, UNSW Art & Design
- 2016 – Secret 7: In-dent Faces (Cimú), AD Space, UNSW Art & Design
- 2016 – Prelude 1.1, Girl Genius: Roundtable, Kudos Gallery, UNSW Art & Design
- 2015 – Figures, Kudos Emerging Artist & Designer, UNSW Art & Design
- 2014 – Ontogeny: Pores, Kudos Gallery, UNSW Art & Design
- 2021 – Artists' Talk: Murmuration – A Pliable Formation, Australian Design Centre, Sydney
- 2019 – Profile 19, Sydney Craft Week, SquarePegs, Sydney
- 2018 – Q&A Session – Les Misérables’18, Kudos Gallery, UNSW Art & Design
- 2017 – Under Pressure, Tarnanthi, Art Gallery of South Australia
- 2016 – Prelude 1.1, Girl Genius: Roundtable, Kudos Gallery, UNSW Art & Design