On Sunday the 28th of July 2024, Greta O’Brien, a volunteer at Olivier Cornet Gallery, wrote about Ben Readman’s artwork titled ‘Veins’. 

The artwork is on view and available for sale in the right wing of the gallery. The artwork is priced at 950 euro. 

Ben Readman is an artist and lecturer in Visual Communications at Technological University (TU) Dublin. He was involved in the exhibition titled ‘Concerning The Other’, a collaborative project and exhibition whereby each artist had an opportunity to creatively interpret changes to the work before it was passed on to the next artist to do the same. 

The artists involved were: James Hanley (RHA), Brian Fay, Claire Halpin, Joanna Kidney, Eoin Mac Lochlainn, Gail Ritchie, Miriam McConnon, Kate Murphy, Ben Readman and Susanne Wawra.  The curators involved in the exhibition were Olivier Cornet, Eoin Mac Lochlainn and Claire Halpin.

Patrick T. Murphy, Director of the RHA, opened the exhibition at the Olivier Cornet Gallery on the 10th of September 2017. The exhibition concluded on the 8th of October 2017. 

The exhibition travelled from Dublin to Queens Street Gallery and Studios (QSS) Belfast, Northern Ireland from the 8th to 29th of March 2018 and concluded at An Táin Arts Centre in Dundalk in March-April 2019.  

When I was exploring the storage area at the Olivier Cornet Gallery, I was immediately curious about the work ‘Veins’ created by Ben Readman.

This is a small-scale work on linen depicting a pathway between trees which seems to convey a sense of calm to the viewer. We see intricate formations of intertwining branches turning and twisting to interconnect with each other. The human physiological aspect can be sensed in both the title of this piece and the connections it conveys.

The steadiness of each graphite stroke, leading the viewer through a path of ambiguity with the use of perspective combined with the drawing technique of hatching and cross hatching, creates a strong range of tonality between lighter and darker sections and elevates the texture of the surface. This helps to convey a dark dense pathway, presented within the background and opening up into brighter sections in the foreground of the piece. 

‘Ben Readman’s works employ a number of traditional techniques and materials such as graphite, pigment and oil on gesso prepared wooden panels or linen. These works engage with forms of actual, perceptual and imagined landscape. They are diverted realities that merge interpretations of natural phenomena, molecular structures and human physiology, incorporating diverse networks of ideas and subject observations. Readman presents us with shards of shuffled truths that act as both ‘macrocosm and microcosm’, amalgams of image and technique that encourage a more protracted consideration of man’s contemporary scientific, philosophical and poetic relationship with the natural world’. 

Mark Garry

More recent news about the artist:  

Ben Readman created a video piece titled ‘Ouroboros’  (with sound by Sound by Hélène Vogelsinger) that showcased in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin on the 23rd of September 2023. He describes this work as follows: 

Greta O'Brien, July 2024