Doug Jeck

‘Novitate’ echoes Jeck’s common interest in early historical figures, using multi-media technique to perform life-like renderings with a nested authority, influence and residual ‘early’ quality. Here the title jostles with representation, “novitate" translating into “newness” or “novelty” and the bust having seemingly been caught in an unhealthy state of mummification, the deathly pallor and creeping signs of dust and decay (exemplified in Jeck’s neat usage of a fraying and discoloured lace) suggesting early scholarly brightness trapped in an uneasy perpetuity.