Four final year undergraduate fine art students featured in this year's Ones to Watch exhibition at Sunny Bank Mills
Fine art students Alice Boot, Angelika Kaccouris, Eve O’Connor and Xia Hooper-Ainsworth are exhibiting a range of works in Ones to Watch 2025 at Sunny Bank Mills.
Ones to Watch 2025 showcases work by emerging artists and makers based in or from Yorkshire. Now in its 12th year, this prestigious annual exhibition at Sunny Bank Mills in Leeds brings together work by 31 artists from across disciplines, from painting to sculpture, film, photography, ceramics, design and more.
Alice Boot, Angelika Kaccouris, Eve O’Connor and Xia Hooper-Ainsworth are all in their final year of their undergraduate fine art courses at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds.
Their work is on display in the Sunny Bank Mills Gallery – a light and airy former cloth warehouse at the heart of a vibrant cultural and community hub in the thriving village of Farsley – until 27 April.
Submissions were invited via an open call and the successful 31 artists were selected by judges Karanjit Panesar, Gill Crawshaw and Helen Moore, along with the Gallery’s Arts Team.
Sculpture by artist Alice Boot. Ones to Watch 2025, Sunny Bank Mills. Photo by Harry Meadley.
Alice Boot is an artist born in East Sussex, currently studying a BA in Fine Art at the University of Leeds. Their practice encompasses sculpture, drawing and installation as well as curating exhibitions and community-based projects.
Alice is concerned with unpicking the complex mysteries of fibre. Through a practice which spans deconstructing and reconstructing burlap and hessian, they seek to understand how fibre behaves, its vulnerabilities and sensibilities, and how it responds to manipulation.
Through this laborious process, an intimate relationship is formed between Alice and the material, where the interactions of rough fibre, clay and skin are crucial to their works.
Detail from Alice Boot's sculpture, Fibre and Found Objects (2024). Ones to Watch 2025, Sunny Bank Mills. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Alice said:
“My research is inspired by post-war Polish women’s sculpture, where I continue to reference my use of found and organic materials to produce complex fragmented forms. My visual vocabulary often responds to the natural fibres and knots found in coastal environments, where the colossal sea forces the decay and transformation of objects.
“Through this research, I often combine clay, decaying metal and destroyed ceramic to interfere with the fibre’s hand-woven structure. This forced unification creates forms charged with resistance whilst delicately balancing a state of fragility and decomposition.
“My sculpture in the Ones to Watch exhibition includes layers of deconstructed burlap with clay carefully woven through and coating each fibre. Its perforated form hangs in the space, creating an environment of instability and disruption. I navigate these deep tensions and entanglements, with this sculpture embodying the dialogue of hand to fibre contact.”
Observe by artist Angelika Kaccouris. Ones to Watch 2025, Sunny Bank Mills. Photo by Harry Meadley.
Angelika Kaccouris is a multidisciplinary artist currently completing a degree in BA Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory at the University of Leeds. Although presently based in Leeds, Angelika grew up in North London and comes from Greek Cypriot heritage.
Angelika’s practice frequently focuses on themes of nature, meditation and entanglement. Her works often encourage an audience into a meditative state by focusing for prolonged moments on small details of the natural world. In addition, Angelika’s work takes on a range of forms and mediums, including photography, video, drawing, poetry and sculptural installations.
Her selected piece for the exhibition, Observe, is a compilation of videos which were all taken from the same day during a walk in the Meanwood Valley, Leeds in 2024.
Visitors watch Observe by artist Angelika Kaccouris at the Ones to Watch 2025, Sunny Bank Mills. Photo by Harry Meadley.
Angelika said:
“To watch Observe is to watch my own observations. The simple act of watching the environments around us, brings into focus its beauty and encourages a calming mental state.
“While appreciating the world in Observe, there is a juxtaposition of it being merely a reflection of the real world presented on a screen. Nevertheless, I hope that this piece can encourage similar real world experiences in people's day to day life.”
Burnt by artist Eve O’Connor. Ones to Watch 2025, Sunny Bank Mills. Photo by Harry Meadley.
Eve O’Connor is an artist who primarily works with sculpture, currently studying BA Fine Art with History of Art at the University of Leeds. She recently returned from a year abroad studying sculpture at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest. Eve’s practice currently explores the boundaries between architecture and sculpture.
Eve’s work has previously involved materialising unseeable facets of our surroundings through a sculptural medium. This has included sculptures based on the materialisation of sound, exploring how sound can be fabricated into a visual three-dimensional state.
Eve uses her sculptural practice to draw attention to neglected aspects of our architectural space through intervention, including the sounds of spaces and the inner workings of an architectural structure.
Burnt by artist Eve O’Connor. Ones to Watch 2025, Sunny Bank Mills. Photo by Harry Meadley.
Eve said:
“In my piece Burnt, the logs were designed to look like a part of the architectural element of the building they are being exhibited in – as if they had been burnt through the wires connecting them to the building’s structure.
“To create this effect, the wood has been charred, displayed in a partly decayed state, halted in the process of its disintegration.
“The allusion to the inbuilt structures of our everyday surroundings in the work references the inbuilt structures in the fabric of our society and how these structures are contributing to the global burning of our environment.”
Cup of Tea by artist Xia Hooper-Ainsworth. Ones to Watch 2025, Sunny Bank Mills. Photo by Harry Meadley.
Xia Hooper-Ainsworth is in her third year at the University of Leeds, studying BA Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory. In addition to her fine art practice of painting and multi-media works, she paints scenery for touring theatre productions and has assisted in producing large-scale murals.
Xia’s practice centres around intuitive pastel and charcoal drawings and the refinement of these forms into rendered oil paintings. The work plays with depth, creating intersecting abstractions which utilise atmospheric and solid line to create energetic forms and a sense of movement.
The surface of the work is a key element, often rejecting the traditional rectangular format. By exploring shape and texture, Xia invites the surface, be it canvas, paper or wood, to come into conversation with the abstracted forms of the work.
Works on display in the gallery at Ones to Watch 2025, Sunny Bank Mills. Cup of Tea by artist Xia Hooper-Ainsworth is on the right hand side. Photo by Harry Meadley.
Xia said:
“A convergence of abstract, surreal and realist elements, Cup of Tea is an intuitive exercise which considers the distortion and relation of form, weight, texture and colour. Its oscillating depths almost form a viable space, but not quite, as the claustrophobic figures anchor the drifting shapes.
“There is a sense of entanglement and idleness yet also a reaching and expanding, it is as though we are observing the moment before an event.”
Ones to Watch 2025 runs from 1 March to 27 April at Sunny Bank Mills.
Sunny Banks Mills’ Arts Director Anna Turzynski said:
“It is such a joy to open our 12th annual Ones to Watch exhibition at Sunny Bank Mills. The cohort this year has been incredibly strong and walking into the Gallery each morning and seeing their work here is incredibly energising.
“The artists exhibiting this year are a mixture of people who are graduating art school, leaving alternative arts education or who are marking a milestone in their self-taught practice.
“All the artists share a desire to show their work in a physical space and I invite audiences to support them at this vital time in their practice. We invite you to come to the exhibition to vote for your favourite piece in the Gallery.”
The winner of the Peoples’ Choice Award will be awarded with a free three-month residency space at Sunny Bank Mills in which to work.
Also on offer is The East Street Arts Prize where one exhibiting artist will be selected by a panel of the East Street Arts Team to have a free month-long residency at Convention House in Leeds.
More information
Ones To Watch 2025 is open in the Gallery, Sandsgate Building, Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley, LS28 5UJ, Tuesday-Saturday 10-4, Sunday 12-4 until 27 April. Closed on Mondays. Free entry.
Full details can be found here on the Sunny Bank Mills website.
About our undergraduate courses
The School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies offers a range of programmes to study fine art at undergraduate level – BA Fine Art, BA Fine Art with History of Art and BA Fine Art with Contemporary Cultural Theory.
Each constitutes a particular pathway but also offer flexibility, allowing you to select from many optional modules.
Find out more about our undergraduate courses.
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Gallery view of Ones to Watch 2025 at Sunny Bank Mills, showing work by Alice Boot, Eve O’Connor and Xia Hooper-Ainsworth. Photo by Harry Meadley.
