SANDRA CORRIGAN BREATHNACH

‘Sentient’ was a collaborative performance / installation between artists Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Corrigan Breathnach. This performance / installation combined live performance, sound, performative drawing and sculptural elements, which seeked to encapsulate a shared energy through interaction and mark making. This piece focused on the awareness that we are only one of many species of sentient beings, all with an ephemeral nature, living in cyclical existence. Carbon, a fundamental building block of life expressed in the form of charcoal, together with salt, opens connotations of protection and will transform, naturally, a new emerging narrative, opening, releasing and creating further fusions, allowing forms and perceptions to alter, as the performance unfolded it echoed transitions in nature, moving from darkness into light.

Duo drawings were created using Corrigan-Breathnach’s hair embedded in willow, with hair holding memory and willow emotional healing, the personal becoming a sharing, connective element. This drawing element of the performance drew on the duo’s body of work, through which both artists have explored evolutionary aspects, by tapping into intuitive ways of ‘being’ while creating, through inter-connectivity and the ongoing fluency of collaboration.

IMAGES | ALASTAIR MACLENNAN + SANDRA CORRIGAN BREATHNACH | ‘SENTIENT’ | SARAH WALKER GALLERY | CORK

PHOTOGRAPHY HARRY MOORE | 2022

INSTALLATION / MATERIALS

Duo Drawings – Cotton Paper – Alastair MacLennan Sandra Corrigan Breathnach

Large Banner Duo Drawings – Heavy Cotton – Alastair MacLennan Sandra Corrigan Breathnach

Three Duo Stretched Canvas Drawings – Cotton – Alastair MacLennan Sandra Corrigan Breathnach

Branches from a London Plane tree – Source – Blown down by a storm on Corporation Street, Belfast. Branches cut by the artists. (Note from Sandra Corrigan Breathnach – We had previously spoken about including brances within the performance installation, we were on the way to the studio to do some work when we found this beautiful tree had been blown down by the storm the night before, I happened to have a loppers in my boot it was very sycronistic.)

Drawing Sticks – Created by Sandra Corrigan Breathnach using her hair and by cutting stripping and drying willow.

Two black Vessels wrapped with Jute twine by Sandra Corrigan Breathnach – filled with Salt

Salt Circle

Two tea lights

Three Mackerel – Source Castletownbere

Large Concrete vessel

Water – Source Castletownbere sea water

Duo Performance Drawings

Four small black vessels filled with Indian ink

Alastair MacLennan is a performance artist with international acclaim, he represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale (1997). During the 1970’s and 80s he made durational performances internationally of up to 144 hours each. Since 1975 he has been based in Belfast. MacLennan was a founding member of Belfast’s Art and Research Exchange (1978). He is an Emeritus Professor of Fine Art, Ulster University, an Honorary Fellow of the (former) Dartington College of Arts and of the (former) National Review of Live Art, Glasgow and a founding member and current board member and trustee of the Performance Art organisation Bbeyond, formed in 2001.

ALASTAIR MACLENNAN | ARCHIVE

Sandra Corrigan Breathnach is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in Performance Art, in 2021 looking to give performance artists a platform during covid restrictions Corrigan-Breathnach initiated and organised R-A-W (Recorded Action Web Exhibition) 2021, a new Bbeyond online Performance Art Video Exhibition. In 2019 she initiated and Curated ‘Somatic Distortion’, a Performance Art event which she developed with the Leitrim Sculpture Centre & The Glens Centre. Corrigan-Breathnach’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and published in the critically recognised Abridged Magazine. Corrigan-Breathnach has recently been appointed Project Manager of the performance art organisation Bbeyon​d​, following her position as Co-Chairperson of Bbeyond since 2020.