Acts of viewing and being viewed have become routine in our experiences of digital living. As being visible, or managing our virtual visibility, becomes increasingly important, so do issues surrounding privacy, censorship, authenticity and illusion.

This series of sculptures in porcelain, silicone and mixed media operate in a space between digital and manual production. On Visibility considers the persistence of images, mediated disclosure and slippages between form and formlessness in the creation of digital representation.

On Visibility is the result of Rainey’s ACES award, which he received from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in 2014.

Through a series of classical references and both manual and digital (3D Print) processes, my sculptures consider how digital cultures, advancing technologies and photographic practices can suggest new pathways for representing the body. With the aid of emerging 3D print technologies as a source for rethinking approaches to sculptural practice, my work explores recent (increasingly digitised) changes to our cultural, personal and social ways of living and communicating.

John Rainey is a sculptor based in Northern Ireland, working mainly with 3D print technologies and ceramics. He completed his master’s degree at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2012.

John is an associated artist of Marsden Woo Gallery, London, where his first solo exhibition was held in 2013. In the same year, he completed a four-month residency at Konstfack University for the Creative Arts as the Anglo-Swedish Society’s Visual Arts Scholar and was selected to produce a large-scale installation for “COLLECT 2013 Project Space” at the Saatchi Gallery, London. Recent exhibitions include “Less + More” at Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin and “G R O U P S H O W” at Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast.