About

Jess Swney is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist whose practice explores the complexities of self-discovery, vulnerability and the unconscious biases that shape our identities and relationships. A graduate of Massey University, with a First Class Honours degree in Fine Arts, Swney works primarily with hand-tufted wool and cotton embroidery to create works that exist between painting, textile and sculpture. Through this practice, she challenges traditional distinctions between fine art and craft while drawing attention to the histories and cultural significance embedded within textile-making.

Grounded in an intergenerational connection to textiles, Swney's work considers wool not only as a material but as a language. Historically associated with domestic labour and women's work, textiles become a critical medium through which she examines contemporary womanhood and how social expectations continue to shape female experience. Her tufted rug “paintings” invite viewers to reflect on the unseen and the unspoken, offering intimate spaces where personal narratives intersect with broader cultural structures.

Working between abstraction and realism, Swney develops imagery from memory, observation and lived experience. Her compositions employ rich colour, texture and materiality to evoke emotional states rather than depict literal scenes. Partially recognisable forms emerge and dissolve within soft, tactile surfaces, allowing ambiguity to become a vehicle for exploring the emotional complexities of human experience.

The physical process of tufting is central to Swney's practice. Each stitched mark reflects time, care and the presence of the artist's hand, embracing subtle imperfections as evidence of labour and humanity. For Swney, working with wool is an act of becoming entangled, both materially and emotionally, as each work embodies a process of reflection and self-examination. Through this slow and repetitive making process, her works transform themes of vulnerability into objects of beauty, creating moments of connection between individual experience and collective understanding.

Swney's practice ultimately seeks to reconsider the value of textile traditions within contemporary art while opening conversations around identity, femininity and the evolving relationship between ourselves and the societies we inhabit. Her work invites audiences to look beyond surface appearances, recognising softness not as fragility but as a quiet form of strength and resilience.