Drawn to Ruin: Oliver Ireson’s Surreal Birmingham
Ollie Ireson’s debut collection is a graphite love letter to Birmingham’s forgotten corners. Twisting real locations into surreal compositions, his drawings dignify dereliction and invite us to reimagine the city’s edges. From the burnt-out shell of a long-closed pub to the graffiti-stained arches of Digbeth, Oliver’s work is obsessive, illogical, and quietly profound. This is Birmingham as you’ve never seen it, drawn to ruin, and all the more beautiful for it.
It all started in December 2020, when the world was mostly banana bread and existential dread. Oliver picked up a pencil during the second lockdown and—like many of us, tried to make sense of things. Unlike most of us, he didn’t stop. What began as a quiet antidote to isolation became a full-blown compulsion. Pencil was the obvious choice: black and white, no pressure, and the comforting presence of an eraser. (We love a safety net.)
Fast forward five years and Oliver’s drawings are now unmistakably his, painstakingly detailed, emotionally charged, and slightly unhinged in the best possible way. His work is rooted in Birmingham, the city he was born in and never quite escaped. Think derelict buildings, urban decay, and corners so neglected they’ve looped back around to being chic.
He’s a surrealist at heart, with a soft spot for M.C. Escher and René Magritte. But instead of bowler hats and impossible staircases, we get skate ramps from Solihull, graffiti from Edgbaston, and a doorway from Moseley, all stitched together into dreamscapes that feel both familiar and totally implausible.
Take “Live & Direction”, a drawing that started with a real railway arch and ended somewhere between architectural fever dream and post-apocalyptic doodle. Or “Unreflection,” which mirrors Birmingham against itself, with a blank billboard quietly tallying the hours it took to finish, spoiler alert - it was a lot.
Oliver’s work doesn’t beautify decay, it celebrates it. There’s reverence in the detail. A kind of obsessive care for what most people ignore. His drawings are time capsules, architectural hallucinations, and quiet provocations.
In his short career, Oliver’s work has already been shortlisted for regional art prizes and selected for public exhibition, earning recognition for its surreal precision and emotional depth. Now, his debut collection finds its home at Seventh Circle Gallery, a place that understands the poetry of a broken window and the elegance of a wheely bin removed for aesthetic reasons.
[→ Enter the ruins- Original Artwork]
