As is by Alastair MacLennan

The artist is best known for realising his ideas through ACTUATIONS, (his term for performance / installations). Concurrent with his live work, he also draws, as a parallel and integral process of developing images and themes. The drawing can be seen as extensions and development from the performances and stand as completions in their own right. This drawing is one of a series made for a comprehensive exhibition of the artist's interrelated performance, installation and drawing work, at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol in 1988.
The imagery from the time refers directly and indirectly to everyday, lived experience in Northern Ireland. Multiple, charcoal drawn imaging is inter-referred and overlayed with blocks of charcoaled massing, light emerging from within the work and from outside.
The inferences of mood and atmosphere are affected by living through the troubles in Northern Ireland.

Artist:	Alastair MacLennan
Artwork type:	drawing
Material:	charcoal on paper
Measurements:	1340 x 1540 mm
Technique:	drawing
Date:	1988
Location:	University of Ulster, Permanent Works of Art Collection, School of Art and Design, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Culture:	Western European, Northern Ireland, Ireland
Rights owner:	Alastair MacLennan
Rights status:	UK HE use only
Institution:	University of Ulster
Notes:	He has said: 'A primary function of art is to bridge our spiritual and physical worlds. Through crass materialism we have reduced art to cultural real estate. Actual creativity can neither be bought or sold, though its husks, shells and skins often are. It is possible in art to use meta systems without over-reliance on physical residue and attendant marketplace hustling, jockeying and squabblings. Art is the demonstrated wish and will to resolve conflict through action, be it spiritual, religious, political, personal, social or cultural. To heal is to make whole. As well as ecology of natural environment, there is ecology of the mind and spirit. Each layer of the other, interfused, three in one. The challenge for us today is to live this integration. Already we are late. Time we have is not so vital as time we make.'

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