'The Last Manchurians'. Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen, China,
As a foreigner visiting Xiamen for the first time, Burton was fascinated by the obsessive sweeping and mopping in the city. Everywhere brushes are for sale and mops are hung out to dry – sometimes in the strangest of places. To Burton these everyday objects have an unfamiliarity and beauty and can seem like works of art in themselves. In the ‘The Last Manchurian’ a collection of brooms, mops and cane are constructed into a work that both suggests a narrative and forms a contemporary ‘still life’.