Image: Art and Horse Racing
Art & Horse Racing has introduced Sydney-based painter and architect James McGrath to its roster, highlighting a new work titled 'Books and Heron' as the first painting by the artist available through the gallery. The presentation frames McGrath’s practice as one that threads seventeenth-century Baroque spatiality through twenty-first-century image-making, positioning his work within a cross-disciplinary approach that links painting, architecture and digital media.
On McGrath’s dedicated gallery page, Art & Horse Racing describes him as an Australian artist and architect working at the intersection of traditional painting, architecture and digital media. The site says that over 25 years and more than 20 solo exhibitions, he has developed a signature Baroque theatricality, fusing 16th-century libraries, Dutch still life and environmental data into immersive images. It also notes that his digital work has been shown at The Lume, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the J. Paul Getty Museum.
The newly listed painting, 'Heron and Books', dates from 2026 and is described as oil on canvas measuring 80 x 120 cm, with a price of £3,950. The page also includes a link inviting viewers to visit James McGrath’s website. No exhibition dates or venue-specific show details are given for the work itself, and the gallery’s announcement is presented as an introduction rather than a timed presentation.
The artist’s arrival was also signalled in an email newsletter from Art & Horse Racing, which grouped McGrath among a set of recent introductions. In that message, the gallery reiterated that 'Books and Heron' is the first painting by James available at Art & Horse Racing and described him in the same terms as a Sydney-based painter and architect whose practice bridges Baroque spatiality and contemporary image-making.
Art & Horse Racing operates from Saint Wendred’s in Newmarket, where its website says the gallery is open daily from 10am to 6pm by appointment. The gallery’s broader programme, as listed on its exhibitions page, combines artists working in painting and sculpture and situates itself as a venue that unites the training of racehorses with the celebration of fine art. That context helps explain the gallery’s emphasis on equine-linked subject matter alongside work by artists whose practices extend well beyond it.
The current announcement sits alongside other artist pages on the gallery website, including painters, sculptors and makers working across wildlife, landscape, portraiture and decorative objects. Within that mix, McGrath’s practice stands out for the way the gallery frames it: not simply as a painter of representational subjects, but as an artist drawing on historical spatial systems and digital media to build layered images. The listing makes clear that 'Heron and Books' is the first of his paintings to be offered there, placing the work at the start of a new association between artist and gallery.
