A Temple In The Present Perfect Progressive Tense
21-30 January 2022
69 Regent Road, Kirkdale, Liverpool L5 9SY
Adrian Jeans and John Elcock are re-imagining a historic dockland warehouse in North Liverpool as a Greek temple in which to share their fascination with ancient Greek and Roman cultures and explore the continued reverberations of classical Western thinking through the ages.
Jeans’ works continue his exploration of human identity from within the portrait sculpture tradition, using the particularities of his craft to shine a distinctive light upon our perceptions of ourselves and others. With many classical references, his art ponders the frailty of the human condition and the malleability of the human presence within the complex social contexts of life.
Elcock’s work focuses on the metaphysical properties of found objects. For this exhibition found items are presented both as individual votive offerings and as an ensemble, a portrait of their diverse origination, preserved in a kind of silent Socratic dialogue. Discarded materials and natural forms have been modified to allow for a fuller expression of their essence of being.
The Present Perfect Progressive tense is a verb form indicating that something was happening and is still happening. The same tense applies to Jeans and Elcock, whose contemporary works directly reference the ancient world and dwell upon concepts for which mankind continues to seek explanation.
