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Career Development
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2018
John Rainey, The Theatre of Projected Self, 2013; photograph by Philip Sayer, courtesy of Marsden Woo Gallery, London
Material Uncertainty WITH NEWLY COMMISSIONED WORK FOR EVA INTERNATIONAL 2018 ON THE HORIZON, MATT PACKER SITS DOWN WITH JOHN RAINEY TO DISCUSS THE TRAJECTORY OF HIS SCULPTURAL PRACTICE.
Left and right: John Rainey, Variants (detail) 2017; images courtesy Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast
Matt Packer: Can you describe how your background in the medium of ceramics continues to inform your work? John Rainey: Production and imitation are aspects of the ceramic discipline that continue to be particularly important within my work. However, my curiosity about how things are made, and my compulsion to physically produce things, predates my training in ceramics. For me, processes and skills feel very enabling. I have a need to constantly examine and improve on this technical capacity, which is what drives me forward. My interest in materials has always been broad, but I see my experience in ceramics as a good anchoring point that I can deviate from and return to. In a similar way to how people describe the process of learning languages, I think that my understanding of this material allows me to easily adopt novel materials. It’s very difficult to detach ceramics from the weight of its social, cultural and industrial histories. This richness of context results in a material language that people are generally very familiar with. I enjoy using the illusory potential of ceramics to destabilise this familiarity. Making the work appear as if it were another material, possibly marble, creates a sense of material confusion and uncertainty that I find useful. My work with 3D printing – either in creating final outcomes or as part of my ceramic process – has added to this play with material associations and expectations. MP: Yes, the experience of your work is often one of indeterminacy. Often it is difficult to tell whether we’re looking at an artificial material, or one that has a natural basis; a surface that has been handcrafted or digitally rendered. It’s a question of physicality that seems to extend from your process of production through to the encounter with the viewer. How much consideration do you give to viewers? JR: The effect on viewers is something that I’m still coming to terms with. The more responses I get and the more I try to rationalise them, the more my consideration of the effect becomes informed. There’s a tendency for the work to provoke a feeling
