22nd November - 4th December 2025
Familiar Threads explores domestic and industrial narratives of woven textile.
In collaboration with the Sunny Bank Mills Museum & Archive, the 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.
Open Tuesday to Sunday 10:00 – 16:00 in the Spinning Mill Loft. Closed on Mondays. FREE ENTRY.
ABOUT ALICE BOOT
Alice Boot is an East Sussex and Leeds based artist whose practice is centred on fibre sculpture, installation and drawing as well as community-based projects. Their work investigates the unpredictability of fibre with an emphasis on become acquainted with the material; understanding its vulnerabilities and sensibilities. Through laborious processes of unpicking, weaving, stretching, binding and compressing burlap fibre, Alice reveals deep openings, cracks and perforations.
Alice’s research is inspired by post-war Polish women’s sculpture, where they reference their use of found and organic materials to produce complex woven forms. Their visual vocabulary also responds to the natural fibres, knots, wooden groynes and ghost fishing equipment found in the coastal environments they grew up in.
Alice has recently been awarded the Leeds University’s 2025 Berkofsky Award and the ‘FUAM’ Friends of University Art and Music Graduate Art Prize. They also featured in Sunny Bank Mills Gallery’s 2024 Ones to Watch exhibition.
ACCESSIBILITY
The Spinning Mill Loft is located on the 3rd floor of the Spinning Mill. The loft is accessed by 3 flights of stairs, or by lift to the 2nd floor and steps up to the loft.
Unfortunately, the loft is not currently wheelchair accessible.
There are several disabled toilets on site, as well as free accessible parking.
If you have any questions or concerns about access prior to your visit, please email [email protected] or call the Gallery Team on 0113 256 3239