Selected Exhibitions
2026 | Melbourne Art Fair
2025 | Crip Time Clock Exhibition, MAGMA Gallery
2025 | Old School, Craft Victoria
2025 | Excused from Efficiency, Presented by FIN Gallery
2024 | Design Fringe, Linden New Art
2024 | Australian Furniture Design Award Exhibition, Presented by Stylecraft
2023 | Melbourne Now, NGV Australia
2023 | Foreign Dialogues, Co-Curated with Dominika Kuthova, Presented by Finkelstein Gallery
2023 | Melbourne Design Fair
2022 | Sydney Contemporary, Presented by Finkelstein Gallery
2022 | The Chair Exhibition, Craft Victoria
2022 | Melbourne Design Fair, Select Section curated by NGV
2022 | Windgate Sings the City, Performance at MPavilion
2022 | DIY Neighbourhood, Urban Design Forum, Guest Artist at Melbourne Design Week
2021 | Avant-Garde Renaissance, Cobra Gallery, Shanghai
2020 | Collectible Fair, Art Lexing Gallery Booth, Brussels
2020 | Metaphore Paris, Hermès Holding Textiles, Paris Deco Off, France
2020 | Scheherazade, Art Lexing Gallery, Shanghai, China
2019 | Milan Design Week, Cossack & Queen & Candy N.2, Local Design Show, 5Vie, Italy
2019 | A.G.M. Expo, Friends & Associates, Melbourne
2018 | Fringe Furniture 32, Prima Familia, Melbourne
Grants, Public Art Commissions & Proposals
2025 | Commission, Crip Time Clock, School of Geography Art-Science Engagement Grant, University of Melbourne
2024 | Commission, River of Mists and Shadows, Home Docklands, curated by Craft Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
2024 | Finalist, Harmony Grove, Public Art Proposal, Victorian Level Crossing Removal Project (LXRP), Croydon
2023 | Commission, “Diva Garden”, Sculptural Group, Commissioned by Dorsett Hotel, Melbourne CBD
2021 | Recipient, Public Art Grant, Test Sites with “Tree Spirit”, City of Melbourne & Testing Grounds (Tree Spirit)
Awards
2024 | Recipient of Australian Furniture Design Award, Presented by NGV & Stylecraft (Chronicles of Resilience Cabinet)
2024 | Highly Commended, Bespoke Design at Design Fringe (Chronicles of Resilience Cabinet)
2021 | Highly Commended, Clarence Prize for Excellence in Furniture Design, Tasmania (Elementary Abacus)
2021 | Recipient, Northern Beaches Environmental Art & Design Prize (Stardust)
2021 | Recipient, Design Futures Award (ADA); Design Innovation Award: Supported by MPavillion; Best in Lighting Award; Design Fringe, Linden Art Gallery (Stardust), Melbourne
2020 | Finalist, AFDA Award, Presented by NGV/Stylecraft/Jam Factory (Elementary Abacus)
2020 | Vivid Design Awards, Australian Design Alliance Award of Merit (Elementary Abacus)
2019 | Highly Commended, The Design Files Awards (Totems Prima Familia)
2019 |Recipient Vivid Design Awards, Colour Award (Cossack & Queen & Candy N.2)
2018 | Recipient, Most Experimental Design, Fringe Furniture 32 (Prima Familia), Melbourne
BIO
Marta Figueiredo is an Australian–Portuguese multidisciplinary artist and designer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her practice spans experimental design, sculpture, installation, public art and performance.
Working between art and design, Marta moves between object, body and space. Some works begin with familiar objects or spatial structures, which she alters through material, scale, function or context. Others begin with a site, a bodily experience, a material behaviour or an image that stays with her. Across these different starting points, she is interested in what objects and environments ask of us, how they shape behaviour and encounter, and what can happen when their expected purpose is opened up.
The relationship between bodily experience and designed environments recurs throughout her practice. Her attention to accessibility asks who objects and spaces are designed around, and what happens when bodies sense, move through or use them in ways those designs do not anticipate.
One strand of her work draws on lived experience of chronic illness, feminist thought and disability perspectives to explore care, bodily visibility, labour and different experiences of time. Participation and collaboration shape selected projects, including her continuing research with human geographer Dr Elisabetta Crovara into chronically ill women’s experiences of working from home.
In public art, Marta often begins with the site itself: its history, ecology, architecture, scale and the ways people move through and inhabit it. Her architectural training informs how she works with structure, circulation and changing viewpoints, while material, colour, light, sound and movement shape how each work is encountered. These elements are developed together, allowing the work to respond closely to its setting while retaining its own sculptural and imaginative character.
Marta was previously registered as an architect in Portugal and the United Kingdom. She is not registered as an architect in Victoria and does not offer architectural services.
In 2024, Marta received the Australian Furniture Design Award for Chronicles of Resilience, a participatory sculptural cabinet developed with eleven people affected by endometriosis. Her work has been presented in Australia and internationally, including Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria, Sydney Contemporary, Milan Design Week and Collectible Brussels.