Fine Art alumni Alice Boot wins this year’s BA Dissertation Prize awarded by Henry Moore Institute

BA Fine Art graduate Alice Boot has been announced as the winner of one of two dissertation prizes presented by the Henry Moore Institute.

Through the annual Dissertation Prize, the Henry Moore Institute encourage research and writing that explores sculpture in its most expansive form.

Two awards are presented annually for outstanding BA and MA dissertations focused on contemporary, modern or historical sculpture, with a prize of £250 for each. Winning dissertations are also published and added to the Henry Moore Institute library.

Applications for the annual prize are open to dissertations submitted within the previous academic year at any university in the UK. This year’s submissions included essays that examined the preservation of bronze sculptures, the depiction of widows, diasporic biographies, and those that explored sculpture through quilting, dissent, absurdity, heritage, and more.

Announced on 23 February 2026, the awards for the Dissertation Prize 2025 have gone to Natasha Alexander (York St John University) and Alice Boot (University of Leeds).

Alice Boot's winning artworks for the FUAM Graduate Art Prize 2026. The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds. Photo © University of Leeds.

Alice Boot graduated last summer with a BA Fine Art from the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, shortly after which they were announced as the winner of the FUAM Graduate Art Prize 2025.

Alice works with fibre, burlap, charcoal, clay and natural materials to create hybrid forms balancing fragility with resistance. Inspired by Magdalena Abakanowicz and by coastal environments, their sculptures explore decay, transformation and renewal.

By combining fibre with found objects such as ash branches, metal and ceramics, Alice constructs works charged with tension and possibility.

Alice’s solo show at Sunny Bank Mills towards the end of last year – Familiar Threads – was created as part of winning a Berkofsky Award from the University of Leeds. In collaboration with the Sunny Bank Mills Museum and Archive, the exhibition explored domestic and industrial narratives of woven textile.

Installation view of Alice Boot's Familiar Threads at Sunny Bank Mills, Leeds. Photo by Hannah Guy. Image courtesy of the artist.

Alice’s winning dissertation is entitled ‘Familiar Threads: Thinking with Magdalena Abakanowicz and her Abakans, Artist to Artist’.

Their thesis draws on the post-critical theories of Rita Felsky, who argues for a new type of critique which – rather than to demystify, rationalise and interrogate – allows fluctuating emotions like romantic hope and sympathy into its domain.

Boot considers this as a way of understanding the relationship between themself (as a fan) and the artist (Magdalena Abakanowicz).

Close up of Alice Boot's Familiar Threads at Sunny Bank Mills, Leeds. Photo by Hannah Guy. Image courtesy of the artist.

Alice said:

‘It was an amazing experience being able to research and dissect the life and works of an artist I have admired for so long.

“It was hard at times becoming somewhat closer to the artist whilst simultaneously scrutinising our connection, but it was well worth it.

“I was thrilled to hear that the Henry Moore Institute selected me as this year’s BA winner. I hope that they enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed weaving it together.”

Alice Boot, Weaving II, 2025 (closeup). Image courtesy of the artist.

Nick Thurston, Alice’s dissertation supervisor and Associate Professor in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, said:

“Alice’s project had two difficult drivers: their own ambitions as a sculptor, and their obsessive attraction to the work of Magdalena Abakonwicz.

“Rather than deny these subjective impulses, the real challenge was to find a methodological footing through some kind of ‘critical fandom’.

“Alice had the courage to ‘stay with the trouble’ of their fandom – letting it resonate, with affection and questions, without trying to resolve it – and completing, in the end, an excellent artist’s dissertation.”