Explore the Christie Lange Exhibitions

Two captivating exhibitions invite visitors to explore the hidden wonders of nature through the work of Tasmanian contemporary ceramics artist Christie Lange.

From the intricate ecosystems beneath our feet to the vastness of mountains and celestial skies, Christie’s work reveals unexpected connections between the natural world and our imagination.

At Cradle Mountain Wilderness Gallery, Hidden Ecologies: Revealing the Hidden Wild transforms clay, porcelain and thread into sculptural interpretations of fungi, lichens and forest life. Meanwhile, Where Earth Meets Elsewhere at Madeleine Gordon Gallery in Launceston brings Christie’s textured ceramic and textile sculptures into conversation with Louise Middleton’s atmospheric photography.

Together, these exhibitions encourage visitors to slow down, look closer and discover the extraordinary within the ordinary. Through organic forms, intricate textures and evocative imagery, both invite a renewed appreciation of the natural world and the hidden relationships that connect us all.

Hidden Ecologies: Revealing the Hidden Wild invites you to look closely at the small, often overlooked worlds that sustain Tasmania’s forests.

Presented at Cradle Mountain Wilderness Gallery, Christie Lange’s exhibition brings together ceramic sculpture and mixed-media works inspired by lichens, fungi, mosses and the hidden relationships beneath our feet.

Cracked clay surfaces, intricate porcelain growths and stitched mycelial networks suggest organisms emerging, exchanging nutrients and becoming part of the ground again.

Drawing on observations of Cradle Mountain’s rainforest, these works blur the boundaries between individual organisms and the communities they inhabit.

In Understory: Postcards from Cradle Mountain, sculptural tiles capture intimate fragments of forest life.

As collectors take tiles home, postcards replace them, tracing the work’s dispersal and gradually changing the installation.

Take a little forest time: linger over the textures, peer into small openings and discover a world of renewal, interdependence and quiet wonder.

Exhibitions For the Curious & Nature Lovers

Hidden Ecologies is for anyone who finds wonder in nature, enjoys art or wants to slow down and notice more.

You don’t need to know about ceramics or forest ecology—just bring your curiosity. There is joy in looking closely: discovering a tiny porcelain growth, following a branching thread or recognising something that reminds you of a forest walk.

The sculptures invite imaginative encounters. Is that form a fungus, an egg, a seed, or something still becoming?

Looking at Details with Fresh Eyes

Visitors may leave with fresh eyes for the lichens on a branch, the moss beneath their feet and the quiet processes that keep a forest alive.

I hope these encounters inspire awe, care and a desire to spend more time in nature. For those who choose to collect an Understory tile, participation continues at home.

A postcard replaces their tile in the gallery, making its journey part of the evolving exhibition.

Exhibition Works

The exhibition features hand-built ceramic sculptures, wall installations and mixed-media works combining clay, stitched textiles and beads.

Understory: Postcards from Cradle Mountain comprises 45 sculptural tiles made with dark clay, porcelain, stains and glazes. Each offers a close encounter with forest textures: crusts, clustered growths, small cavities and layered surfaces. Becoming Ground is a group of six oval wall works.

Their central openings reveal delicate, machine-stitched mycelial mats, with beads and fluorescent orange thread woven through branching networks.

Cracked clay, coloured porcelain slips and egg-like clusters suggest decomposition and new life unfolding together.

A floor installation of 28 abstracted basket fungus forms moves from enclosed, egg-like shapes to open lattices. Carved clay, cratered glazes and droplets evoke the strange emergence of fungi from the forest floor.

Nephroma Constellations I & II arrange porcelain lichen forms into two loose colonies. Layered, leaf-like growths, tiny fruiting bodies and fine black threads invite close inspection.

Cryptic Colonies presents small, encrusted ceramic spheres whose ambiguous surfaces might suggest terrestrial or marine organisms, colonies or miniature habitats.

Where Earth Meets Elsewhere brings together Christie Lange and Louise Middleton in a dialogue between earth and sky, intimate detail and seemingly infinite space.

Lange’s ceramic and textile works turn towards the ground and the life emerging from it.

Textured vessels and oval wall sculptures suggest fungal bodies, eggs, spores and seeds, while openings reveal stitched networks or draw attention towards mysterious interiors.

Middleton’s photographic works begin with observations of fleeting light, landscape and natural textures.

Through intuitive layering, mountains, clouds, water and celestial skies become spaces that feel both familiar and otherworldly.

Flowers and foliage photographed through frosted glass, overlaid with flowing water, explore fleeting beauty and the elusive boundary between what we see and what we sense.

At Madeleine Gordon Gallery, these distinct practices meet through their shared fascination with thresholds, transformation and interconnectedness.

Layers of clay, glaze, thread and light invite visitors to consider how visible forms arise through hidden relationships—and to linger where the tangible world opens into imagination.

The Mystery of the Natural World

Where Earth Meets Elsewhere is for curious viewers, lovers of sculpture and photography, and anyone drawn to the beauty and mystery of the natural world.

No specialist knowledge is needed: the exhibition offers many ways in through colour, texture, atmosphere and imagination.

Visitors can enjoy moving between two very different encounters with nature. Christie Lange’s sculptures reward closer attention, with clustered growths, intricate threads and openings that make you want to peer inside.

Louise Middleton’s layered images invite the eye to wander through mist, mountains, water and celestial light.

There is pleasure in discovering unexpected connections: a small ceramic form might suggest an entire emerging world, while a pattern in sand might resemble a constellation.

We hope visitors leave with a sense of wonder and a refreshed awareness of their surroundings, noticing how the smallest details and largest landscapes belong to a connected, continually changing world.

Discover the Artists

Christie Lange’s Begin again I–VII comprises seven oval ceramic wall works. Their textured surfaces carry clusters reminiscent of eggs, spores and seeds, alongside branching growths that recall slime moulds.

Central openings reveal delicate stitched and beaded networks, suggesting life and exchange beneath the surface.

Her twelve Lycoperula vessels take inspiration from puffball fungi discovered beside the road. Rounded bodies, richly worked glaze surfaces and small openings invite viewers to consider what these forms contain, protect or might release.

Louise Middleton presents photographic works that combine close observation with intuitive digital layering. In Equilibrium, photographs of a lake’s surface, a cloud and cascading water bring stillness and movement into the same image.

Cosmic Design layers patterns made by sand crabs with an aurora night sky, connecting tiny earthly markings with celestial space.

Forged and Foraged combines fern imagery with tree shadows photographed on brass. Other works explore mountains, mist, and flowers and foliage seen through frosted glass with overlays of flowing water.

Together, the sculptures and photographs offer encounters with both intimate, imagined ecologies and expansive landscapes.

About the Ceramist Artist

Christie Lange is a sculptor and ceramic artist who lives and works in Binalong Bay, Tasmania. Christie studied a Bachelor in Contemporary Art – Visual Arts at UTAS Inveresk and graduated with First Class Honours in 2020.

Christie won the Art Farm Birch’s Bay Small Sculpture Acquisitive Prize in 2019, has been a finalist in the Women’s Art Prize Tasmania in 2020, Art Farm Birch’s Bay Sculpture Prize 2020, 2021 & 2022, and the Boxed-In Sculpture Prize in 2021 where she was awarded the People’s Choice award.

Christie recently was awarded an Arts Tasmania Education Residency grant which she completed at Winnaleah District School, Tasmania.

Her practice embraces ecology, biodiversity, hybridity and the agency of the non-human. Bringing together material investigations with a mycelial imagination, refrains of the mycological, zoological and botanical are present in her hybrid inventions.

Highlighting the planets need for biodiversity, she tenderly examines redemption, restoration and renewal as her works in clay reveal nature’s infinitesimal expressions. Through her work, Christie hopes to nurture a deeper appreciation for the natural world.

Explore Christie’s beautiful website, workshops and classes, exhibitions, Creative Coaching and shop her Gallery. Follow Christie on Facebook and Instagram for creative joy.

Learn More About the Exhibition Artist

Come meet Christie Lange in her Artist Profile story with Art Trails Tasmania and discover a passionate, intelligent and thoughtful Tasmanian artist.