Jonathan Zawada
Australian multidisciplinary artist (born 1981)
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Jonathan Zawada (born 1981) is an Australian multidisciplinary artist, designer and music-video director whose work spans painting, digital image-making, installation and product design.[1][2] He gained prominence creating record-sleeve artwork, winning ARIA Awards for The Presets' Apocalypso and Flume's Skin, and has held exhibits internationally. Zawada designed the 2018 Metamathemagical projection for the Sydney Opera House sails[3] and created the artwork, music videos, and an accompanying film for Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke's album Tall Tales (2025).[4]
- Multidisciplinary artist
- designer
- music-video director
- Apocalypso cover art
- Skin cover art
- Metamathemagical Opera House projection
- Tall Tales artwork and videos
Jonathan Zawada | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1981 (age 44–45) Perth, Western Australia, Australia |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | c. 2000–present |
| Notable work |
|
| Awards | ARIA Award for Best Cover Art (2008, 2016) |
| Website | zawada |
Early life and career
Zawada was born in Perth, Western Australia, and is largely self-taught.[5][6] He began professional graphic-design work in Sydney in the early 2000s. His first solo shows – Semantic Webs (2005) and Boolean Values (2008) at Monster Children Gallery – reportedly sold out and later toured to Melbourne.[7] In late 2010 he relocated to Los Angeles and staged Over Time at Prism Gallery – a series of digital landscapes from manipulated graph data painted on linen.[8]
Collaborations
Zawada created the floral cover and full visual campaign for Flume's 'Skin, winning the 2016 ARIA Award for Best Cover Art.[9] The partnership continued with pop-up exhibitions in Los Angeles and Sydney and, in 2024, the immersive installation Every dull moment (EDM) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.[10]
Zawada has collaborated with Mark Pritchard on MP Productions EP 1 (2020),[11] and later with Pritchard and Thom Yorke on Tall Tales (2025). For Tall Tales, Zawada designed the artwork and videos, a feature film version of which was screened on 8 May 2025 – the day before the album's release.[11][12]
Zawada created animated visualisers for Röyksopp's Profound Mysteries trilogy.
Critical reception
Writers note Zawada's blending of analog and digital, artificial and natural.[2][13][14] Stephen Todd, wrote in the Australian Financial Review that he sees the world as a "metamathemagical place where science and sensuality, the rational and the emotional, collide."[1]
For Pritchard and Yorke's multimedia project Tall Tales, Jazz Monroe at Pitchfork called Zawada the duo's "informal third member".[4] Fermín Cimadevilla at motion design website Motionographer wrote that the accompanying feature‑length film "evokes a distinct atmosphere – dreamlike yet disorienting" and stated that it defies cliche and AI art trends.[2]
Design press have likewise commended his album packaging. Megan Williams, writing in Creative Review, described the AI‑assisted sleeve for Pritchard's MP Productions EP 1 as "distorted and deformed to surreal effect" and "a bizarre collage of incongruous shapes and textures", adding that it "casts a wry glance at the very technologies that created it."[15]
Awards
- ARIA Award for Best Cover Art, for Apocalypso by The Presets (2008)[16]
- ARIA Award for Best Cover Art, for Skin by Flume (2016)[9]
- Nominee, J Awards, Australian Video of the Year, for "Hi This Is Flume" (2019)[17]
Exhibitions
| Year | Title | Venue | City | Notes / refs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Semantic Webs | Monster Children Gallery | Sydney, Australia | First solo show.[7] |
| 2008 | Boolean Values | Monster Children Gallery | Sydney / Melbourne, Australia | Catalogue also self-published.[7] |
| 2010–11 | Over Time | Prism Gallery | Los Angeles, United States | Data-driven landscapes.[8] |
| 2014 | Touchingly Unfeeling | Calm & Punk Gallery | Tokyo, Japan | Solo exhibition.[18] |
| 2022 | On Burning Mirrors | Calm & Punk Gallery | Tokyo, Japan | Machine-learning image generation.[19] |
| 2016 | Flume × Jonathan Zawada Pop-Up | Space 15Twenty | Los Angeles, United States | Exhibition of Skin visuals.[14] |
| 2018 | Metamathemagical – Lighting of the Sails | Sydney Opera House | Sydney, Australia | 15-minute projection mapped to Opera House sails.[3] |
| 2023–24 | DXP² – Digital Transformation Planet | 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art | Kanazawa, Japan | Included "Sacrifice, An Act of Permanence".[20] |
| 2024 | Every dull moment (EDM) | Art Gallery of New South Wales (Tank) | Sydney, Australia | Immersive installation with Flume.[10] |