6 minute read

In the Studio with Sam Jinks

from Sullivan+Strumpf Contemporary Art Gallery Sydney and Melbourne, Australia and Singapore-Summer 2022

from Sullivan+Strumpf Contemporary Art Gallery Sydney and Melbourne, Australia and Singapore-Summer 2022, page 66

Yang Yongliang: In Detail

Ahead of the artist’s debut solo exhibition at the new Sullivan+Strumpf Melbourne gallery in February, 2023, internationally recognised sculptor Sam Jinks talks to Sullivan+Strumpf’s managing editor Alex Pedley, to give us some insight into the resurgence of the ‘Hyperreal‘.

Alex Pedley (AP) / Rendered in excruciatingly real and tender detail, your sculptures often represent beings, human and non-human, in various states of life and death. They illicit incredibly visceral responses. Is realism for you, especially in three-dimensional form, a mechanism to bring object and audience into something of a metaphysical encounter—with self, with mortality? Has this changed over time for you?

Sam Jinks (SJ) / Historically I have used realism because I grew up illustrating and sculpting in this fashion. I later found there was an empathy generated within the viewer that was useful to encourage a deeper understanding of the work. It also means the viewer brings their own life and experience, so I often find the work takes on an entirely different meaning to the one I have.

Sculpture is what I have worked in the most. I enjoy the physicality of it, it can require a lot of movement from the artist and there is an energy it brings. The viewer is cohabiting the room with its presence. With painting, the image is still ‘other’. I feel, as humans, we often forget the fundamentals of life, the experience of being an animal roaming the earth for a finite period. Societally, we get caught up in the details, the day-to day. I think it's important to be reminded of the rhythm of it all, the natural process of life.

**Sam Jinks Seated Woman, 2022 silicone, ground pigment, hair 31 x 47 x 73 cm Edition of 5 plus 2 artist's proofs**

Spending more time in nature has been a great help for me to see the constant cycle of birth and dissolution. It's easy to look at one as bad and one as good, but it's all part of the same.

AP / Your works, all bodies in various forms, seem to reach out and speak body-to-body, as it were, with our own. Audience consideration feels central to how you make work, is communicating via the languages of the body a way for you to connect with audiences?

SJ / I’ve used the body in many sculptures because the body has a language of its own. It can communicate through empathy and shared experience. It mirrors us, so when I come up with an idea, the pose and condition will have a meaning directly related to the work.I often have figures at the beginning of life and figures much later in life. To combine them suggests a cycle, a constant birth, dissolution and rebirth.

It can also be interpreted as the same figure holding themselves at a different stage of life. This can often be felt relating to our own children and parents. It's as if we are again experiencing our own youth and also our old age when we are around them. When using animals or hybrids in work I’m usually suggesting some base instinct or unconscious behaviour. Much of human behaviour is not based on logic but irrational reactions. This is very prevalent in personal relationships.

AP / The materiality of your works is often a surprise for people after their initial encounter, it quite literally stops audiences in their tracks. From expert conservator to passer-by, all are fascinated with how you create such ‘fleshy flesh’ (technical term) in resin and silicone (the human hair of course helps!). Has the landscape changed over the years in terms of products available, and future proofing capacities, both in the field and your work specifically? These beings feel so fragile, but they are actually quite robust, aren’t they?

SJ / When I started, I used building materials, whatever I could to get the translucent appearance of skin, which was usually caulking silicone. But as time has gone on, materials that are easier to use have come along. Techniques have changed a lot, but the desire remains the same. To make something that goes beyond its material origins and gives a little peace and understanding to what it is to be a human. The last few years have been a testing period for me, not only regarding the pandemic, but literally a period of testing materials and futureproofing the process. It’s been many years since I made my first sculptures and within this time period, and some discussion with peers, I think the technology is now well understood.

AP / Audiences instinctively talk about Duane Hanson, John De Andrea, Ron Mueck, or even Maurizio Cattelan when they see your work. In fact, you have often shown in various exhibitions over the years together, and you are currently showing in ‘Hyperreal’ which has been touring the globe for nearly a decade in various iterations. However, this isn’t the first wave of the ‘Hyperreal’ zeitgeist, is it?

SJ / There is a long history of embellishing sculpture with details that suggest life. The Kritios Boy from early the Greek-classical period is an example of a work that shifted the early more rigid forms into a body in contrapposto; a more naturalistic form that brings all the elements of the body together. I think there is a fascination with this because it’s a preserved reflection of ourselves. It gives an opportunity to look deeply into the experience of another without having to engage.

AP / In realist sculpture, or the ‘hyperreal’ as it has become known, one of the great fascinations lies not simply in the virtuosic technical execution, but rather in what that almost total simulation of the real, although inanimate, does for reconciling us with concepts of our own mortality and the modalities of lived experience. Your new works seem to take this to a whole new level, can you tell us a little about what is happening in the studio?

SJ / The studio is somewhat chaotic at this point as I’m at the final stages of making work. This period is less about the ideas and much more the technical, but most of the work emerged from outside the studio. A number of the new works are encounters in nature that demonstrate the rhythm I mentioned earlier. The renewal of life from disillusion, or from decay in some cases. I’ve been drawn to this as it seems to create balance that gives some comfort to me, a circular aspect that has been a regular theme in the work since I began, but this time, it feels a little clearer.

EXHIBITION: SAM JINKS, 16 FEB – 11 MAR 2023, S+S MELBOURNE

+ EMAIL ART@SULLIVANSTRUMPF.COM TO REQUEST A PREVIEW

This article is from:

Sullivan+Strumpf Contemporary Art Gallery Sydney and Melbourne, Australia and Singapore-Summer 2022

by sullivanstrumpf