Jess Swney | I Think My Pig is Whistling

Jessica Swney graduated from Massey University in 2023 with a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Arts. 

Introduction by Dina Jezdic

“Swney’s use of fabric sits within a historical continuum while also offering a critique of a cultural inheritance that has long positioned textiles as a medium and visual language traditionally assigned to women. Her tufted rug “paintings” address the nuanced journey of self-awareness and societal expectation, engaging with what is often unseen or unspoken. They create a space to consider the complex dynamics faced by young women navigating social interactions within a patriarchal framework, and hint at the ways societal pressures and personal experiences shape strategies of self-assertion.

Swney’s subject matter moves between abstraction and figuration, drawing from both memory and lived experience. Through materiality, colour, and tone, she defines and redefines these moments. Partial and suggestive forms occupy the delicate edge between image and abstraction, where colour, texture, and surface become vehicles for conveying experience and emotion rather than simply depicting a scene. The works hold a playful tension, producing beauty and pleasure while acknowledging the complex interplay between personal and collective struggle.

Her interest in the applied arts as a site of both care and critique finds a potent outlet here. Across her broader practice, Swney often explores dualities; land and sea, presence and absence, intimacy and entitlement . drawing on personal experience to consider how women move through and are received within the world. That sensibility resonates quietly within these works, embedded in careful decisions around colour, texture, and form”. 

The piece also acknowledges the artist’s time on residency in Morocco, where she learned traditional weaving techniques from local artisans using hand-operated looms. This experience profoundly informed her engagement with ideas of cultural inheritance - or, perhaps more poignantly, the absence of a singular tangible lineage -  and prompted a search for forms of collectivism within an increasingly individualistic society. Through textile practice, Swney turns toward her female lineage, using material to explore relationships between people and place, and the quiet ways belonging is constructed.

The recurring linear geometric motifs that structure the work are drawn from the ornate cast-iron balcony gates outside the space where Swney ate most of her meals during the residency. That balcony became deeply symbolic: it was the only outdoor place where she could be alone, as local customs did not permit women to occupy public space unaccompanied, and certainly not to dine alone without risk of misinterpretation. As a result, the architectural form became synonymous with both safety and protection, while simultaneously standing as a poignant reminder of the barriers imposed on women’s freedom.

Rendered in textiles, the work carries an inherent irony utilising materials associated with warmth, tactility, and flexibility are used to echo the rigidity of cast iron, highlighting the tension between comfort and constraint that defined the artist’s lived experience. This contradiction deepened Swney’s appreciation for autonomy, and for the often-overlooked privilege of choosing how, where, and when one moves through space.

Through textiles, Swney creates a space for reflection and processing, ultimately offering a place of belonging -  on e that gestures toward tradition, culture, and community. In this sense, the work becomes an homage to textiles themselves: the medium through which Jess has found both language and home.