Familiar Threads – exhibition

This new exhibition of work by fine art alumni Alice Boot at Sunny Bank Mills explores domestic and industrial narratives of woven textile.

In collaboration with the Sunny Bank Mills Museum & Archive, Alice Boot’s new solo show highlights the fragmented fibres, stacked sample swatches and disintegrated guard books living in the old Warping Rooms.

Together, with the restoration of a family Douglas Andrew tabletop loom, the show explores the two histories of the industrial textile mill and family history of domestic Cottage Weaving.

With themes of fragmentation, deconstruction and reconstruction, the exhibition places historical weavings and tools alongside contemporary sculpture, highlighting shared and distinct stories of weaving.

About Alice Boot

Alice Boot is an artist from Leeds and East Sussex who has recently graduated from the University of Leeds with a BA in Fine Art. Alice’s practice encompasses sculpture, installation and drawing, in addition to curating exhibitions and community-based projects. 

Their practice is concerned with unpicking the complex mysteries of fibre. Through laborious processes of deconstruction, reconstruction, binding, stretching and weaving, Alice seeks out fibres’ vulnerabilities and sensibilities. They search for when deep cracks, openings and perforations are revealed through the making process. 

Alice’s research is inspired by post-war Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz, where they reference her use of hand-built looms as well as her use of found and organic materials to produce complex, woven, fragmented forms. Their visual vocabulary also often responds to the natural fibres, knots, rocks and ‘ghost’ fishing gear found in the coastal environments of their childhood home, where the colossal sea forces the decay and transformation of objects. 

In their first solo show at Sunny Bank Mills, Alice introduces decaying metal to fibre, allowing raw and unkempt forms to take up space in an untouched part of the mill.

Alice has recently been awarded the University of Leeds 2025 Berkofsky Award and the FUAM (Friends of University Art and Music) Graduate Art Prize 2025. They also featured in Sunny Bank Mills Gallery’s 2024 Ones to Watch exhibition.

Follow Alice Boot on Instagram @a.boot_art

 

Venue

Spinning Mill Loft
Sunny Bank Mills
83-85 Town St
Farsley
Pudsey
LS28 5UJ

Opening event: 22 November, 1 to 4pm.

Venue information and opening times.

Image

Courtesy of Alice Boot.