Artists directory

Mary

Muir

Disciplines: Mixed Media

Location: Buxton

Materials: Embroidery, Felting, Found, Knitted, Lino Print, Monoprint, Relief Print, Screenprinting, Stitched, Tapestry, Woven

Through my mixed media practice, I investigate embodied connection with place, temporality, materiality and memory. My current focus is North Ronaldsay, the most northerly island in the Orkney archipelago, and my birthplace. Sharing the same latitude as Alaska, this elemental, island world measures only 2.7 square miles, rising just 20 metres above sea level at its highest point. Combining walking, photography, textiles and printmaking, I explore the island’s rich and fragile maritime environment, its biodiversity, ancient geology and equally rich and distinctive tangible and intangible cultural heritage. As part of my practice, I have created an extensive photographic archive shaped by slow walking and sensory immersion. I photograph intuitively, seeking to capture the island’s rich tones, textures, shapes and lines, it’s ancient sea and wind-sculpted geology and entangled fragility. The poignant and resonant traces of past lives are woven into the very fabric of the island – visceral layers of human presence and old ways dating back to the Neolithic.

Previous Experience

Qualifications: 2025: MA in Fine Art, Manchester School of Art (Distinction) 2023: BA (Honours), Creative Art and Design Practice, University of Derby and Leek School of Art. (Distinction) 1986: BA (Honours) History of Art, University of East Anglia (Class 2:1) Awards 2025: The Textile Society – Postgraduate Award Winner, 2025 Exhibitions: *11 Nov-30 Dec 2023 Astound23 BA(Hons) Creative Art and Design Practice Degree Show, The Nicolson Gallery, Leek; 9-19 May SRISHTI: The Unfolding of Creation, When Though Becomes Form, Hotbed Press, Salford; Sept 2025 Bloom, Manchester School of Art MA Degree Show, Grosvenor Gallery, Manchester; Jan 31-10 May, Common Ground:The Living Landscape, Kirkcudbright Galleries, Kirkudbright.

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