MIF / Mary Burns

In June & July 2017 I collaborated with seven other members of Manchester International Festivals Creative 50. We were a group of Greater Manchester artists who were tasked and commissioned to create two digital responses to the festivals programme.

Our group looked into the story of Mary Burns’, Engles lifelong partner who was his link to the working class communities in Salford. There have been no images and very little written information found about Mary, so for our project we decided to reimagine this women and create all our work surrounding her story.

I wanted to use iron and rust gathered from Manchester to create a city scape on an item of clothing that would have been worn at the time of Mary Burns. I found in my fabric store a dress that was from the right in history &  it had embroidered on it the letters M.B.

I used  this dress to dye and print with my salvaged rust and drew over it to create an Industrial revolution landscape.