Amy Jenkins

Amy Jenkins (born 1966, in London) is an English novelist and screenwriter. She is the daughter of political journalist Peter Jenkins and the stepdaughter of The Guardian columnist and author Polly Toynbee.

After attending Westminster School (which only admits young women to the sixth-form) she studied law at University College London. Jenkins turned to writing and in 1996 achieved her first significant success with This Life, a BBC television drama series about the lives and loves of a household of solicitors and barristers. She devised the series and wrote several episodes.

Other film, television and journalism work followed and in 1998 she secured a two-novel contract, her first novel, Honeymoon, appearing in 2000. Although it was the second biggest debut novel of the year, selling over 250,000 copies in the UK and Commonwealth, critics noted that a central plot device in Jenkins' work possessed a striking similarity to the premise of Noël Coward's play Private Lives. In Honeymoon a man and woman who seven years previously had a brief affair meet again when they find themselves staying in adjacent hotel rooms on their respective honeymoons; at the opening of Coward's play a divorced couple find themselves honeymooning in adjacent hotel rooms. Her second novel, Funny Valentine, was published in 2002. She wrote and produced the feature film Elephant Juice, released in 2000. She has directed three short films including the "Mr Cool" segment of Tube Tales

Amy Jenkins (artist)

Amy Jenkins (born 1966) is an American artist from Peterborough, New Hampshire who is recognized for her work in video installation and experimental film.

Education

Jenkins earned her BA degree in Fine Art at Colorado College in 1988 with a Minor in Italian and Cinema Studies. In 1990, she obtained an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

Work

Jenkins is best known for her multidisciplinary installations that combine video, audio, sculpture, and performance to create immersive environments. Familial relationships, home, sexuality, and the male/female identity are the recurrent themes of her intimate, visceral, and often personal, narratives. Jenkins was one of the initial artists in the early 1990s to use video sculpture to create intimate artworks that belie their technology. In her investigations of female identity, miniature objects have played a vital role in Jenkins’ videos and multimedia installations. In her video installation Ebb (1996), Jenkins projects an image of a female bathing in red water—suggesting blood—onto a tiny claw-foot tub on the top of a ceramic-tiled pedestal. As the video progresses, the water in the tub gradually becomes clear, creating the surprisingly realistic illusion that the blood is unnaturally seeping back into her body—a reversal of the menstrual cycle.