Jennifer Mills

What’s in a name? 2009–2011

There are many Jennifers in the world — even many Jennifer Mills. Here, the Australian artist Jennifer Mills gathers together 325 other women named Jennifer Mills from across the globe found through the internet. These Jennifer Mills have been transformed from their original internet images through this Jennifer Mills’s tender watercolour paintings, which are equally attentive and non-judgemental.

The phenomenon of trawling the internet to contact strangers has led to many unexpected consequences, such as finding one’s googleganger — an internet double. The artist notes the strange but dislocated intimacy of the internet: ‘The idea that in the mass of difference and differentiation you might have something in common with a stranger has a kind of dizziness about it.’

All the images of these various Jennifer Mills were posted online by themselves, or perhaps family or friends. Though they were once widely dispersed, they are now bought together in this one assembly. As writer Jennifer Mills notes: ‘These Jennifers have travelled through the hyperreality of the network, and come back home.’