‘It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.’
Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 1811
In experiencing intimacy the human mind wrestles with the impossible task of being as one with another. Sculptor Sam Jinks unites the textures of the human body and human emotion in these works addressing moments of intimacy. Jinks observed the ‘form and texture of frogs and frog-skin being very similar to babies and baby skin’ and formally arranged this vision of the touch in Small Things. In Untitled the two babies dance in untouching stillness, reflecting all the intimacies of human relationships that will be accepted, sought or abandoned through a life. Like the babies, the symmetry and almost-touch of Unsettled Dogs takes on an allegorical dimension: the dog-headed cynocephalus of ancient and medievalimagination reminding of the human capacity for destructive irrationality within intimate relationships.
