Jessica Pinney has exhibited both as a performer and sound artist in Melbourne and in the United Kingdom since 2007, performing under the name ‘JUAREZ’. She is 27 years old.

In 2009, Jessica gained a Masters of Art, Aural and Visual Cultures from the prestigious Goldsmith University London. She is also a recent Master of Arts graduate from London College of Communication, where she majored in Sound. She has released several albums with her band Johnny Saw Horses, and has interned at Heide Museum of Modern Art.

In 2011 Jessica was awarded the Art Start Grant by the Australia Council to further her artistic career and practice. She has recently returned from a research trip to Northumberland and Vancouver to work with sound artists Chris Watson and Hildegard Westerkamp.

She has a current police check and a working with children check. She is an experienced and responsible minder of children and young adults.

In her own words:

My artistic practice explores the heightened experience of the teenager, the notion of secret keeping and its connection to suppression and mental illness, and the potential for healing within singing or other voice work. Noise - that of our environments and ourselves - remains a constant preoccupation of mine. It is something I find difficult, yet exhilarating, to embrace. 

Noise has been considered divisive and destructive; the use of noise thought of as a negative act. However, noise and its use in sound and music can have very positive effects. Not only creating potentially euphoric or transformative physical sensations through physiological responses to such loud and chaotic sounds, live, or broadcasted, noise is able to achieve this communally. Live noise shows have the potential to create a moment of unified, communal experience. The communities forged through the relatively marginal appreciation of noise can be as supportive and enriching as any others.

It is this active, positive potential of noise that ‘Where We’re From’ utilises. The noise here gives permission (of a kind) for thoughts and ideas to be expressed and released/re-evaluated instead of being fixed in explicit communication. It works as a constructive and creative reframing of identity and objecthood. In this way, it is also related to my understanding of singing therapy as treatment for mental illness. My aim of unburdening the public of their teenage secrets reveals my desire to contribute to the small field of sound work that reflects upon experiences of or issues pertaining to mental health and its treatment.