Deviations, a Solo Exhibition by John Rainey

What to Expect

Deviations is a solo exhibition by the sculptor John Rainey, running at Galway Arts Centre from 12 July to 27 September 2026. It gathers work from three series made between 2021 and 2026: Slip Tank, Errors and Retrofits. The pieces are cast in porcelain, metal and marble, and they take classical sculptural forms and pull them out of shape through deliberate misalignments, grafted fragments and reconstructions.

The exhibition’s own framing is that deviation works as a creative tool, disrupting settled ideas of craft, coherence and the body. In practice that means figures that read as recognisable and wrong at the same time, with the digital and hand processes behind them left visible rather than smoothed away. The show occupies the galleries at 47 Dominick Street Lower, the Georgian building that houses Galway Arts Centre in the city’s West End. The Arts Centre programmes a Thursday late opening through the run, and it has scheduled a tour and an artists’ conversation alongside the exhibition. Details here come from the Arts Centre’s own event page.

Good to Know

• Exhibition dates: 12 July to 27 September 2026, so it is open through August and most of September
• Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 17:00, Thursday 10:00 to 21:00, Sunday 12:00 to 17:00
• Venue: Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street Lower, Galway city
• Admission is not stated on the Arts Centre’s event page, so check before you visit
• Thursday late openings run to 9:00 PM, which suits anyone who cannot get in during the working day
• A conversation event with John Rainey, Enda Burke and Peter Bradley is scheduled for 20 August

Getting There

Galway Arts Centre is at 47 Dominick Street Lower in the West End, about a seven-minute walk from Eyre Square over the Wolfe Tone Bridge, and two minutes from the Spanish Arch along Fr Griffin Road. Drivers coming in on the N6 should use the Fairgreen or Jury’s Inn multi-storey car parks and walk across, as Dominick Street parking is metered and limited. City bus routes serving Fr Griffin Road stop close by, and Galway Ceannt railway and bus station is roughly twelve minutes on foot.