9. Unpicking – The Gannex and I (2025) – Laura Nathan

2025. Installation 

Laura Nathan’s site-specific installation Unpicking: The Gannex and I
interlaces textiles, print, video, sound, and archive photography to tell a
story of trauma, resilience, and repair—echoing the artist’s own heritage as
the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.

Driven by a desire to learn from other survivors and their descendants Nathan
undertook this exploration through a tactile dialogue with a Gannex coat.
Gannex fabric was invented by Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor Joseph Kagan
in 1951 and at the peak of its success the Kagan Textiles Ltd factory employed
up to 1,000 people in Yorkshire.

Over the course of eight months, the threads of one coat were picked apart
alongside the life story of its inventor. The first of two video works in this
installation shows the artist’s life-sized hands, working to separate panel from
panel, stitch from stitch, and finally single wefts from warps. Three dry point
etchings document the marks made by the artist in her rigorous unpicking process.
The composites of the coat are displayed on a table in neatly arranged piles.

A second video traces Nathan’s attempt to reweave the fabric on a small loom.
She knots together salvaged threads, coaxing them back into alignment. The
result is a delicate and imperfect textile, its uneven weave visibly interrupted by
the scars of its own making—knots, gaps, and sudden shifts in tension.

Nathan’s laborious interrogations took place while listening to the words of
those who worked at Kagan Textiles Ltd and elsewhere in Yorkshire’s textile
industry. The gallery space (itself an old textile mill) is filled with the sounds of
weaving looms and the voices of Holocaust survivors, refugees and immigrants
who built new lives here. This included South Asian migrants who experienced
the Partition of India in 1947.

With thanks to the families whose collections feature in this work: Ibi & Val
Ginsburg, Hannah Goldstone & Mike Wertheim, Jen Kagan, Iby Knill, Chris Knill,
Pauline Kinch, and Julia Kinch. Courtesy of Holocaust Centre North Archive

White Line Project, held by Heritage Quay at the University of Huddersfield: Dr Nasim
Hasnie, Mohammed Hanif Asad, Sajida Ismail, Mahamood Kler, Gian Singh Sahota.