Ocular/Speculo

In Ocular/Speculo, James McGrath turns to abstract formalism to explore the act of seeing through fragmentation. At the core of the series is an imagined mirrored orb—a spatial construct built using 3D architectural modelling. Rather than reflecting a stable world, these spheres implode. Their reflections break apart, scattering floral motifs across shards and slivers that stretch across circular and fractured surfaces. McGrath’s use of the sphere is not symbolic, but spatial. It stands in for the eye itself—a convex frame that distorts and inverts. Some works present the orb whole, filled with swirling petals. Others dismantle it entirely, using jagged triangular panels to simulate a shattered field of vision. This recursive act of breaking and reassembling is where the series finds its formal language. The paintings shift away from the literal references to Baroque libraries that appear elsewhere in McGrath’s work. Instead, Ocular/Speculo reclaims still life through abstraction, using reflection and fragmentation to question the reliability of visual perception. The result is a body of work steeped in optical tension: at once meditative and ruptured, lush and volatile. It is a theatre of seeing, where the image is always on the verge of collapse.