Marley Starskey Butler
Artist / Researcher / Social Worker

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Selected Works

2026
Compensare: For the Swallows We Weigh, Eastside Projects
Yuh Nuh, Vivid Projects

2025
Augenblick

2024 
Thirty-Six, Midlands Arts Centre
Anchors, Hospital Rooms
Oh, So Now You Love Us? Eagleworks
Else, Multistory
Us Done Well EP X Warner and Butler

2023
4am

2021
Lemon Tree 
Thank You Music

2020
Black For Ages 
Tower In Memories

In Progress
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Zwischen
Selected Ambient Portraits 2018 - 25

The Archives 2004 - 20 (Coming Soon)

PhD

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© Rarahdem 2026

Compensare: For The Swallows We Weigh
Eastside Projects

An invisible ball passed between each other.

Transfer to hand stacking game.

Weigh against each other, to make up for.

Look to the camera for reassurance.




Marley Starskey Butler’s exhibition Compensare: For the Swallows We Weigh has been developed during a ten-month placement at Beacon Family Services, an organisation in Birmingham providing therapeutic and relational play services for parents, carers, and families. Their approaches support children and their parents or caregivers, particularly those in adoptive or fostering families, to make sense of their family’s world and strengthen their relationships.

Set against a backdrop where political priorities and funding decisions continually shape access to therapeutic services, the exhibition illuminates how these systemic forces intersect with the lived realities of families and the professionals who support them. Embedded in the inner workings of the organisation, Marley engaged in wide-ranging conversations with staff and observed their use of Theraplay® and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP) techniques, which gave root to this new multidimensional artwork. 


By observing family and carer-child-therapist interactions, Marley attuned to the subtle nuances of verbal and physical communication within these therapeutic practices, reflecting on the experience of consciously working with each other’s energies and ultimately connecting through the joyful medium of relational play. Drawing on these reflections, and blending them with overarching themes that emerged through staff discussions, they built a library of notes and instructions designed to be translated through movement and sound into films and music.


Marley worked with movement artists Kim Bormann and Marley Starkey Joyner to translate this material, directing them with multilayered prompts and choreographic devices that allowed them to progressively move from relational play games to movement that explores the emotional, psychosocial and political landscapes that shape family support.

The resulting choreographic experiments are presented as films alongside a newly composed piece of music, inside a large circular carpeted area whose design has been reverse engineered from glitches in the video recording system and converted into a space for movement, listening and watching. 

The swallows know there is hope,
There is always hope.

Eastside Projects: 86 Heath Mil Ln. Deritend, Birmingham B9 4AR
Opening Times: Wed to Sat 12pm - 5pm
24 January to 4 April

Music Composition Audio Description: Here
Exhibition Guide: Here
Access Guide: Here 

Installation Photos by Ashley Carr 2026


Body-in-Play was a practice-based performance that sought to nurture the “self in context.” Informed by Taoist philosophy, it explored the dynamic body–landscape in resonance with Marley Starskey Butler’s exhibition Compensare: For the Swallows We Weigh at Eastside Projects.

Through relational play and embodied response, movement artists Kim Bormann, Seraina Dejaco, Sarah Butler, and Dawn Reeves, alongside artist Marley Starskey Butler, who generated live sonic material in dialogue with the moving bodies, reflected on, responded to, and remixed the exhibition’s sonic and visual textures, interacting playfully through the conversational body.

Conceived within 24 hours of its presentation, it unfolded as a shared moment in time. The work developed through both private and public collaboration. Development, testing, and rehearsals were open to the public from 12–5pm, followed by a performance at 7pm as part of Digbeth First Friday on 3 April 2026.

This performance commission was a collaboration between Eastside Projects and  Fabric