Alexandra Jonscher

Message Threads is a body of paintings exploring the shifting dynamics of communication and social relations in a post-digital landscape. Examining expressions of the human trace, from mark-making to digital footprints, she uses discarded materials, detritus, signs, and symbols, to consider the breadth of abstract ways in which the human condition is represented. Jonscher uses painting as a mode of communication, replicating texts, memes, images, videos, and gifs to represent a state of flux between fact, fiction, meaning and non-meaning. Each work is composed as an abstract interpretation of screen-based activity, from online newsfeeds, text message chat threads, and online website scrolling. 

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Two works from this body of work, 'Seen' and 'IRL' were selected to be part of Hatched: The National Graduate Show 2020 at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. 'Seen' and 'IRL' both observe and critique our relationship to forms of communication as unstable and fluctuating. The repeated looping spray-painted gestures signify the accelerated, nonsensical, ongoing chatter of the everyday; from multiple online newsfeeds and the phone call we overhear on the bus, to the ads we get in our junk mail. Incorporating found objects with her paintings, she negotiates a tension between the readymade, the art object, and architecture, creating a tenuous, evolving environment. The works navigate between artificial, superficial symbols and objects and authentic, meaningful expression, anchored by a sea of ambivalent emojis, searching for a sense of meaning and understanding amongst the saturation of the surrounding landscape.

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Photography: Daniel James Grant, Ian Hobbs Media, Document Photography and Campbell Henderson.