Jonathan Zawada
{{Short description|Australian multidisciplinary artist (born 1981)}}
{{Use Australian English|date=May 2025}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2025}}
{{Infobox artist
| name = Jonathan Zawada
| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1981}}
| birth_place = Perth, Western Australia, Australia
| nationality = Australian
| occupation = multidisciplinary artist, designer, music-video director
| years_active = about 2000–present
| notable_works = Apocalypso cover art; Skin cover art; Metamathemagical Opera House projection; Tall Tales artwork and videos
| awards = ARIA Award for Best Cover Art (2008, 2016)
| website = {{URL|zawada.art}} {{URL|zawada.au}}
}}
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.
He gained prominence creating record-sleeve artwork, winning ARIA Awards for The Presets' Apocalypso and Flume's Skin, and has exhibited internationally.
Zawada designed the 2018 Metamathemagical projection for the Sydney Opera House sails and created the CGI/AI artwork and videos for Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke's album Tall Tales (2025).
Early life and career
Zawada was born in Perth, Western Australia, and is largely self-taught.
He began professional graphic-design work in Sydney in the early 2000s. His first solo shows{{snd}} Semantic Webs (2005) and Boolean Values (2008) at Monster Children Gallery{{snd}} reportedly sold out and later toured to Melbourne.
In late 2010 he relocated to Los Angeles and staged Over Time at Prism Gallery{{snd}} a series of digital landscapes from manipulated graph data painted on linen.
Collaborations
Zawada created the floral cover and full visual campaign for Flume's 'Skin, winning the 2016 ARIA Award for Best Cover Art. 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.
Zawada has collaborated with Mark Pritchard on MP Productions EP 1, and along with 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{{snd}} the day before the album's release.
Zawada created animated visualisers for Röyksopp's Profound Mysteries trilogy.
Critical reception
Writers note Zawada's blending of analog and digital, artificial and natural.
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."
For Pritchard and Yorke's multimedia project Tall Tales, Jazz Monroe at Pitchfork called Zawada the duo's "informal third member". Fermín Cimadevilla at motion design website Motionographer wrote that the accompanying feature‑length film "evokes a distinct atmosphere{{snd}} dreamlike yet disorienting" and stated that it defies cliche and AI art trends.
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."
Awards
- ARIA Award for Best Cover Art, for Apocalypso by The Presets (2008)
- ARIA Award for Best Cover Art, for Skin by Flume (2016)
- Nominee, J Award, Australian Video of the Year, for "Hi This Is Flume" (2019)
Exhibitions
Publications
References
{{reflist|refs=
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External links
- {{Official website|https://zawada.art}}
- {{IMDB name |9613575 |Jonathan Zawada}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zawada, Jonathan}}
Category:Artists from Perth, Western Australia
Category:Australian contemporary artists