Freya Jobbins

7 March – 9 April 2021      Firewall No. 1

Link to artist's website

Freya Jobbins is quick to point out that her work Firewall No 1 is part of a series. Each piece engaged with the “firewalls'' that people set up in public spaces to isolate themselves from community engagements. She is thinking of noise reducing headphones and the habit people have of scanning their phones that for Freya, says ‘do not approach me’ and now possibly also helps to maintain effectivesocial distancing. Her overriding interest is the mask, constructed from surrealistically disassembled body parts harvested from dolls. These works simultaneously conceal and reveal.

Freya was born in Johannesburg. Her parents migrated there from Germany and in 1974 they moved on to Australia, which handed Freya a life in the western suburbs ofSydney. After high school in Campbelltown she joined the police force becoming the first female weapons instructor in 1988. A brutal car accident brought her a second marriage, 2 more children and after they started going to school, the opportunity to make art. Now 55 and engaged in a vigorous and successful art practice in Picton at Sydney’s western edge, she commented, “I don’t make art to sell, I make it as commentary, to use my voice”.  

It is impossible to avoid the obvious connection between Freya’s mask and the Covid-19 mask that has replaced sunglasses as the mask of choice on Sydney public transport. Like the Niqab it 

hints at exoticism by focusing our attention on the unusually naked eyes of the people we encounter and offers mystery by concealing their age. Or as Saima Islam commented in a facebook post, “I love my freedom that burka and niqab has provided me. I love the way it give me courage to stand among all the other individual and be confident toward the journey of life.” Above all the Covid-19 mask provides a safe position from which to observe the world and the people encountered there. As opposed for example to the Venetian carnival mask that obscures the eyes in a manner that permits an evening of aberrant behavior. But as I consider Freya’s mask I can’t help finding an uncanny resemblance to Hannibal Lectors mask worn on this occasion by a young woman of clear and unmasked beauty. It’s a chilling dichotomy that focuses my attention on the events and concerns that are reconditioning Australia’s gender politics.

Tony Twigg