Sam Jinks: Observing the human condition

Image: Sam Jinks, The Messenger (Iris) 2018. 24k gold (wings), silicone, pigment, hair, water, powder-coated aluminium, tinted silicone oil. From the collection of the artist. Photo: QVMAG.

Hyperreal sculpture has a habit of stopping people in their tracks. It asks us to look longer than we might like, to sit with discomfort, tenderness or recognition. Few artists do this as quietly – or as powerfully – as Sam Jinks.

Known world-wide for his hyperrealist figures – hand-sculpted and recrafted in silicone, resin, calcium carbonate and human hair – each appearing so life-like and so intimate, that encountering them can feel like an interruption of a suspended moment.

And yet, what distinguishes Sam’s work is not only its realism. It’s how his sculptures capture something that we cannot really name, but we feel and anticipate as present or yet to arrive.

Image: Sam Jinks, Tattooed Woman 2007. Silicone, silk, human hair, acrylic, nylon, polyurethane foam, timber. Collection of Penny Clive, AO. Photo: QVMAG.

Sam’s path into fine art was not conventional. He began his career in textbook illustration, and then commercial special effects in film and television before moving on to work in art studios and finally his own dedicated fine art career. This background gives Sam a rare technical fluency with materials, combined with genuine empathy and connection to the deepest impressions of life.

For Sam, inspiration doesn’t arrive fully formed or wrapped in theory. It comes from life itself – ordinary moments, fleeting observations, personal reckonings. “Life,” he says simply, when asked where his ideas come from. “Things happen and you have an experience that resonates in some way.”

Sometimes, that resonance arrives at the exact moment it’s needed. Sam recalls a time when he was under pressure, ideas running dry as a deadline loomed. “I got home from work and I was like, what am I going to do? I’m about to run out of time.” Then, on a quiet rainy evening – almost accidentally, he noticed two snails interacting on the ground. “It was just this beautiful thing,” he says. “A snapshot of the strangeness of observation… just observing the natural world and going, how extraordinary.”

Those snails became Sam's next sculpture - demonstrating an approach that underpins his broader practice. By working from attention, rather than predetermined concept, his work resists over-intellectualising. Instead, it asks us to notice: bodies, gestures, vulnerability, and the often-irrational ways we relate to one another.

Image: Sam Jinks, Dog Head 2009. Silicone, pigment, resin, hair. From the collection of the artist. Photo: QVMAG.

One of the most striking examples is Dog Head. Sam made the hybrid sculpture in the late 2000s during what he describes as an “unsettling time”, shaped in part by the London riots and a growing awareness of how insecurity manifests in human behaviour. “I was observing the kind of irrational nature of personal interactions,” he reflects. “You can almost unconsciously manipulate a relationship just because of your own quirks and foibles.”

For Sam, the dog-headed figure became a way to articulate something instinctive and uncomfortable. “We think that we’re sophisticated,” he says, “but ultimately we are still animals.” The sculpture reflects back the subtle cruelties, insecurities and power shifts that play out in everyday interactions, rendered in painstaking detail.

That detail, of course, comes at a cost. Sam is candid about the toll of making figurative work, especially when it draws heavily from personal reference. “Doing figurative stuff all the time, you’re kind of going through your own stuff as well,” he explains. “You’re using your own body as reference… and that can be taxing.”

Some works linger long after studio hours. “I remember when I did Pietà. I couldn't get someone to model for me for that body or that figure, but I had all these references… I was living with this every day. At the end of it, I was exhausted from that. That was rough.”

Image: Sam Jinks, Still Life (Seated Pietà) 2007. Silicone, human hair, acrylic, nylon, polyurethane foam, timber. Collection of Penny Clive, AO. Photo: QVMAG.

At times, he turns to non-human subjects as a way to shift perspective. These works are not necessarily easier, but they offer a different kind of focus within the studio. “It was a little bit of a holiday from the figurative stuff,” he says of the snails.

The process itself is rarely straightforward. Sam keeps sketchbooks full of ideas, many of which will never be realised. “I generally have lots of ideas,” he admits, "but sometimes I don't have the energy to actually see it through because it's just too complicated.

“Sometimes the closer you look at them, the more absurd they become. It's almost like – you can't look too closely, because it'll kind of unravel."

Time and distance play an important role in determining which works move forward, with Sam revisiting old sketches years later and keeping only what still resonates. “If you go back and say, that was bad – glad I didn’t make that, then you can discard it.”

Image: Sam Jinks, Medusa/Beloved 2017. Silicone and resin. From the collection of the artist. Photo: QVMAG.

Starting a work is often the most exciting stage. “There’s so much possibility,” he says. "So usually, I launch into it with drawings or a maquette." But as the work progresses, doubt inevitably creeps in. “There’s always that moment, two-thirds of the way through, where you go, this is ridiculous. People are going to laugh at this. What am I doing?”

That moment, Sam suggests, is dangerous yet unavoidable. “I’ve probably abandoned more work than I’ve finished,” he says. "I've got a studio for sculptures in progress that I just couldn't get right. I try not to do that now, but it's happened a lot."

Despite that uncertainty, the work gets completed – sometimes only just in time. “Usually, I’m finishing the work as the courier arrives at the door,” he laughs.

Once it leaves the studio, the sculpture no longer belongs to him in the same way. Sam is acutely aware that viewers bring their own histories to his work. “People take their own things away,” he says. “They project themselves, or people they know, onto it.” That, ultimately, is all he hopes for. “It would be disappointing if they didn’t have any experience.”

Image: A visitor approaches Sam Jinks' sculpture Divide (Self-Portrait) 2011. Silicone, resin, horsehair. Gift of the artist. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program to National Portrait Gallery, Australia. Photo: QVMAG.

Across his practice, Sam's work invites sustained attention. It creates space for reflection to consider contradiction: tenderness and unease, beauty and discomfort, control and vulnerability.

They remind us that beyond our social rituals and self-image, we remain profoundly physical, emotional beings - still learning how to live with one another.

And perhaps that’s why his work lingers. Not because it tells us something new, but because it shows us something we already know - and invites us to really look. 

Image: Exhibition view of Sam Jinks || Mortal Reflections. Photo: QVMAG.

 

Discover more about Mortal Reflections