Jonathon Zalakos

JONATHON

ZALAKOS


Upon inspection, Jonathon Zalakos’ naive and gestural compositions slowly reveal themselves to be thoroughly engineered - steeped in an aura of painstaking exactitude. His work spans jewellery, sculpture, and digital media.
Born and raised in Western Sydney, Jonathon is an Australian artist now based in Texas, USA. He graduated from the Australian National University in 2020 and earned his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2026.
Having worked with metals since childhood, he explores a diverse vocabulary of goldsmithing techniques and cannibalises jewellery movements of the past. His self-referential parodies of the genre get at the deeply human drive to ornament and externalises the unconscious sense of lack that haunts us. Cultural production from internet ephemera to archeological findings are aestheticised through his work and are brought into discourse with the construction of self. Ultimately, Jonathon works to understand why we make what we do, and how these things in turn ‘make’ us what we are.

A Pot of Gold at the End of the Assembly Line
Produce Section (in technicolour)
Beam
Blueberry Bush
Body Parts
Bouncy Castle
Diamond Shards
Engraving, Engraving, and Silver
Mirror Hole
Produce Section (without stem)
Produce Section (with stem)
Retroreflector
Six Pearl Ring
Six Sapphire Ring
Eleven Agate Pendant
Three Pearl Ring
To Be Under Construction
Whirlpool Model
Wrist Scaffold with Various Projectors
Torx Magnolia

A Pot of Gold at the End of the Assembly Line.

We see a brooch of silicone sausages and bolt-on sapphires in realisation of a toddler’s crayon schematic — an engineered rose destined for exhibition on the refrigerator, perhaps. Suspended between intuitive composition and the meticulous revision of traditional craft, these works embody many imaginations: child-like creation; stuck-up goldsmithing; ‘handy-man’ repairs; and formal products systems design. These divergent creativities are united in the final pieces, contributing to a romantic portrait of a self-satisfied manufacturer. Visible traces of their making process conjure a spectral ‘maker’, implied by the fingerprints, toolmarks, assembly, and conspicuous decision making of an ‘other’. We relate to these signifiers as opportunities for our own bodily action, and so this specter speaks in our own voice. Unconsciously possessed of this specter, viewers are vicariously thrust into an imaginary context and made sensitive to the nature of this work — whether it affirms identity or alienates humanity.

Exhibition History

  • Dover Street Market. Dover Street Market, England. 2026.
  • RISD Grad Show. Rhode Island Convention Center, USA. 2026.
  • International Summit of Jewelry Classes. Pinakothek of Modern Art, Germany. 2026.
  • Miniature Terrain. M16 Artspace, Australia. 2026.
Acultural Reproduction
Reproduction of an Icon (Presumably Homosexual)
Reproduction of an Icon (Presumably Homosexual) [Reverse]
Ewww, A Gross Object!
I'm With Icon of a Foolish Virgin
Neutral Brooch
Small Idol with Engraved Frog (mounted)
Virgin and Chad Pin (?)

Acultural Reproduction.

Cultural reproduction describes how existing cultural norms and values are transmitted between generations and across communities. These “transmissions” are built into our objects, environments, and institutions. The work references “museum fodder,” a tongue-in-cheek label for the abundant works of early modern iconography. Their symbolism does not produce the same meanings to us that they would have to an audience of their own time & place. They are an amputated arm of material culture. This reference is combined with internet memes. Combined with the cultural product of online communities, radicalisation, and digital recreation all pose new dark areas to be studied. The memes are stripped of specific meaning and are supported by white-painted wire-formed mounts. This makes salient the mode of intervention by the museum.

Exhibition History

  • Coping Strategies in the Extended Bathroom. Sol Koffler Gallery, USA. 2025.
What the Body Wants
Prosocial Sublimation
A Castration Anxiety
An Oedipal Complex
Desirable Object 1
Desirable Object 2
Desirable Object 3

What the Body Wants.

Jewellery positions itself between us and the things that we want. Perched on the surface of our bodies it cradles in its prongs and has cut into its faces signifiers of our fundamental desires. It is a bridge that channels these things into our being. As humans we have a drive to adorn ourselves with symbolic materials and forms (akin to a hunger for food, or sexual desire) and affix them to our bodies (akin to eating, or fucking). The genesis of the drive to adorn, however, is a consequence of our language rather than an organ, such as the stomach or genitals. These practices for us become ‘signifying’ as our unconscious precipitates in any activity we undertake, leaving fingerprints of deeper, perhaps repressed, desires on the raw clay of our being.

Exhibition History

  • Miniature Terrain. M16 Artspace, Australia. 2026.
  • Exposed! SNAG, USA. 2025.
  • Cocks & Cunts. Wear House Gallery, Netherlands. 2025.
  • Coping Strategies in the Extended Bathroom. Sol Koffler Gallery, USA. 2025.
Chasing Clouds
Starry Night
Brooch
Eclipse
Falling
In Air
Stretch
Sunset
Silver Lining

Chasing Clouds.

Chasing Clouds featured jewellery made from sheets of steel that I had beaten into blobs, evoking liquid flung into air. The surfaces were treated to alternatively capture and reflect light (with polish and patina), and raised silver inlay emphasises a sense of expanse. The works are kind of about recognising shapes in clouds, but are really born out of the euphemistic imagery of cinematic ‘discretion’ shots. At the start or climax of an action scene (of any nature) the film cuts to an innocuous object, maintaining emotional continuity at the expense of visual continuity. This kind of symbolism is only conceived of as a response to censorship - whether imposed by law, public decency, or individual repression.

Exhibition History

  • Chasing Clouds. Craft and Design Canberra, Australia. 2024.
  • Form / Ground. M16 Artspace, Australia. 2023.
  • Cox, Jeffs, Zalakos. Gallery of Small Things, Australia. 2023.
  • Dialogue. M16 Artspace, Australia. 2023.
It is Under your Skin
Emerald Bug
Watching
Circle
Empty Nest
KICK ME
Mycelium
Ruby Bug
Spider
Ticks
Wasp's Nest

It is Under your Skin.

I have seen jewellery move. It’s always had legs of sorts, a brain, and intelligence. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see it crawl up and down your body. You see yourself wearing jewellery but I see jewellery living on you. Every day, I scrape the blooms of jewellery from my body. Whatever root has taken under my skin produces endless shoots of silver, stone, and shell. It reproduces not only in my blood but by my own hand, and by my own activity.
IT’S UNDER YOUR SKIN is my Design Honours thesis, exploring the co-determinate relationship between our designing and our (thoroughly designed) environment. Alongside a body of jewellery work are diegetic pin-boards and video, contributing to an immersive installation. The jewellery appeals to horror tropes, suggesting a weird subjectivity that has long influenced human culture, psychology and being. This characterisation of jewellery is an attempt to destabilise the effect of normative design objects that propose a distinction between people and our other-than-human enmeshment.

Exhibition History

  • Graduate Metal XVI. Gallery Central, Australia. 2024.
  • Human, Jewellery, Human. ANCA Dickson, Australia. 2022.
  • Emerging Contemporaries. Craft and Design Canberra, Australia. 2021.
External Affect
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External Affect.

External Affect is a series that examines how divergent models of the self create confusion and discomfort when supported in the mind at the same time. These models are suggested by philosophers, psychologists, economists and so on. Where these models intercept, overlap and separate from each other, so do the distinct elements that compose the jewellery. Through this effort, thoughts are transported from the mind and onto the body.

Exhibition History

  • Emerging Contemporaries. Craft and Design Canberra, Australia. 2021.
  • ANU School of Art & Design Graduating Exhibition. ANU, Australia. 2020.