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Sam Jinks developed a talent for drawing and constructing his ideas alongside his father, a Melbourne cabinetmaker. Jinks worked as an illustrator before turning to sculpture. He worked in film and television special effects before becoming a fabricator for artist Patricia Piccinini. For the last ten years he has sculpted independently, working in silicone, fiberglass, resin and hair – human, animal and synthetic. His work was shown at Art Stage Singapore, and in Personal Structures (2013), a collateral event of the 55th Venice Biennale. Jinks’s work is held in Australian and international public collections including Kiran Nader Museum of Art, Dehli, India and the Museo Escultura Figurativa Internacional Contemporaenea (MEFIC), Portugal, RMIT and McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park. When Jinks’s first solo exhibition Body in Time toured to regional venues in 2012, the people of Shepparton raised funds to purchase the sculpture Woman and Child for the Shepparton Art Museum. Jinks’s work has recently been displayed at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection in Frankfurt, Germany and Hanover, Germany. His Standing Pietà (2014) was shown at Art Basel, Hong Kong and Marc Straus in New York. In late 2015, Jinks’s work toured to the Daejeong Museum, South Korea.
Purchased 2015
© Sam Jinks
Sam Jinks (age 38 in 2011)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves: who we read, who we watch, who we listen to, who we cheer for, who we aspire to be, and who we'll never forget. The Companion is available to buy online and in the Portrait Gallery Store.
Eye to Eye is a summer Portrait Gallery Collection remix arranged by degree of eye contact – from turned away with eyes closed all the way through to right-back-at-you – as we explore artists’ and subjects’ choices around the direction of the gaze.
This display sets two impressive portraits from the collection into direct dialogue: Sam Jinks’ sculptural self portrait and Nick Mourtzakis’ painted portrait of David Chalmers, along with related maquette and sketches.Together they explore physical and psychological manifestations of the strata of self-hood.