'Deviations', exhibition as part of Galway International Arts Festival 2026

Working in cast porcelain, metal and marble, artist John Rainey reconfigures the visual language of classical statuary to propose alternative sculptural histories. Forms appear both familiar and strange: bodies shift between states, fragments are grafted or misaligned, and surfaces imitate other materials.

Rainey draws on an archive of plaster-moulded forms to assemble composite, mythological figures through processes of recombination, echoing the hybrid characters of Galway’s Macnas parades. Presented as an evolving system of forms, 'Deviations' allows familiar structures to drift from their origins, opening new possibilities for form, material and meaning.

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