Deviations

Curated by Tom McLean

In Deviations, John Rainey presents sculptures drawn from three bodies of work produced between 2021 and 2026: Slip Tank, Errors and Retrofits. These works trace an evolving approach to deviation from historical source material through slips, misalignments and acts of reconstruction. Working in cast porcelain, metal and marble, Rainey reconfigures the visual language of classical statuary to propose alternative sculptural histories. Forms appear both familiar and strange, with shifting bodies, grafted fragments and surfaces that imitate other materials. Deviation operates as a creative tool, disrupting ideas of craft, coherence and the body, while suggesting more fluid identities. In Retrofits, Rainey draws on an archive of plaster-moulded forms to assemble composite, mythological figures through recombination, echoing hybrid characters from performance traditions. Presented as an evolving system of forms, Deviations allows structures to drift from their origins, opening new possibilities for form, material and meaning.

* * *

EVENTS

12 July 6pm | Exhibition Launch

13 July 1pm | Artist Talk with John Rainey

16 July 6pm | Curatorial Tour

23 July 6pm | Workshop

John Rainey is a sculptor based in Belfast. He received an MA in Ceramics and Glass from the Royal College of Art (London, 2012), and a BA in Contemporary Crafts from Manchester Metropolitan University (2009). Rainey’s work has had solo presentations at Marsden Woo Gallery (London, 2013), Golden Thread Gallery (Belfast 2016) Naughton Gallery (2021) and BERG Gallery (Stockholm, 2019, 2022)His sculptures are held in public collections including the UK Government Art Collection, the Irish National Collection, the Ulster Museum, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Collection.