Image: Installation Image with Artist. Credit: Natasha Harth.

It Hangs by a Delicate Thread reflects the changing moods of the Wallum Heathlands, through its transformative stages of repair and recovery, its fluctuations from beauty to harshness, and its reaction to human intervention. Artist Cate Verney has a strong connection to the Wallum Heathlands, spending much time exploring and researching this diverse ecosystem that is characterised by a dense covering of low shrubs, gnarly trees, and ragged grasses sprouting from low nutrient sandy soils. Her works reflect this connection to the environment, weaving together natural materials and found objects with botanically dyed textiles, fragile silkworm threads, and fine embroidery. Regeneration and repair in the heathland is a gradual, many layered process, retaining traces of its loss in the environment, much as Cate’s own narrative is layered and interlaced into the complexity of her artworks.