She was a founder of the London Women’s Liberation Art Group in 1970. A 1971 exhibition of her work, which included a drawing of Hugh Hefner dressed as a bunny girl, was shut down by the police.

Between 1973 and 1975, Harrison worked with artists Kay Hunt and Mary Kelly on a study of female employment in a metal box factory in Bermondsey (London). In 1975, they presented their findings at the South London Gallery in an installation work entitled Women and Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry 1973-75. The exhibit told the story of the 150 women workers who participated in the project, offering a narrative of the relation between the participants and their workplace. The participants also reflected on changes in employment and industry stemming from the Equal Pay Act 1970.

Harrison’s work was included in Issue: Social Strategies by Women Artists, which Lucy R. Lippard curated in 1980 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. This important international exhibition highlighted socially-oriented feminist artistic practices and has been acknowledged as a key feminist exhibition. According to Chris Crickmay, Harrison´s work figured alongside that of others who were gaining recognition and ‘reflecting social concerns in that had not hitherto appeared in art galleries’.

Harrison´s work ‘Beautiful Ugly Violence’ was described by Karen Macklan as ‘a field day of juxtapositions, as the bright and almost cheery colors of her paintings counter the often subdued and sometimes deadly topic: the various means of committing violence against women’.

Margaret Harrison continues to work in the United States and in England. She has exhibited in several other countries, including the US, Switzerland, Germany, China and Great Britain. Her work has been on display in numerous contemporary art museums including the Tate Britain, Tate Modern, and Tate Liverpool. She was also Senior Research Professor and Director of the Social and Environmental Art Research Centre at the Manchester Metropolitan University.

In 2011, Harrison displayed works on paper in the exhibition I am a Fantasy, which was curated by Beverley Knowles at the Payne Shurvell Gallery in East London. She also showed ‘On Reflection’ there in 2013, after a 2012 solo exhibition at the Silberkuppe Gallery, Berlin.

Harrison received the Northern Art Prize in 2013 for Reflect, an installation consisting of three interrelated works: ‘The Last Gaze’, ‘Objectiflection’ and ‘Common Reflections’. The same year, she also received one of the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation awards for artists.