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 varied media, 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.
Deviations 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.
Belfast-based Rainey has works on display in the British government’s official Art Collection, the Irish National Collection, the Ulster Museum, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Collection.
The arts centre on Dominick Street will host a public talk with Rainey at 1pm on Monday, July 13. he will host a curatorial tour at 6pm on July 16, and a workshop at 6 pm on July 23.
