Courtesy: the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Melbourne.

Internationally renowned for his painstakingly crafted lifelike figures, Sam Jinks’ sculptures are imbued with unguarded human emotion, fragility, and vulnerability, piercing the viewer with a moment of intense intimacy.

For his first Australian solo exhibition since 2012, and the first in his home city of Melbourne since 2009, Jinks presents Hope in the Wilderness, a new series of realist sculptural works reflecting on the mysteries of destiny and instability that govern our lives, in an era plagued by alarm and uncertainty.

A body of work beautiful and blistering in equal parts, it’s full of objects that are both haunted by decay, and rich with the possibility of renewal.

At the centre of the darkened gallery space, a singular figure with golden wings shimmers, her ethereal reflection gleaming in a black pool of water below. A startlingly realistic depiction of an ancient goddess, underscoring our ancient and prevailing need for connection; a quiet presence casting a reassuring glow over the accompanying works.

Orbiting this central figure are Jinks’ labours of the past few years, spent confined both voluntarily, and otherwise, to his studio.

Snails, flourishing on the nourishment found within a rabbit’s skull.

A newborn baby, fresh out of the womb, clutched by an elderly deceased figure – its hands mottled with colour and creased with lines, paying testament to a lifetime of motion and experience.

Within each of the works, Jinks captures and expresses the frailty and duality of our existence, in which the cyclical nature of life and death are the only certainties.

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