Curated into the HIVE - Ulverstone Tasmanian exhibition Big Small Worlds, Porcellana Biota is an ongoing series of porcelain sculptures inspired by the intricate relationships that exist within natural systems. Drawing on observations of lichens, fungi, mosses and microscopic organisms, each work imagines a speculative life-form; part familiar, part unknown. Together, these hybrid organisms invite us to consider the biodiversity that exists beyond immediate perception and the networks of connection that sustain life.
Artist Statement:
Porcellana Biota extends Christie Lange’s ongoing exploration of ecological systems through material process, presenting a series of biomorphic sculptures in pure white porcelain. These forms draw from the language of seeds, spores, and emergent organisms, occupying a space between the botanical, fungal, and animal. They are not representations of specific species, but speculative bodies—suggesting life at its earliest and most adaptive stages.
Working exclusively in porcelain, Lange engages a material that demands precision, patience, and responsiveness. Its softness in the hand, paired with its transformation through heat into a vitrified, stone-like state, mirrors the cycles of growth and change observed in natural systems. The resulting forms hold a tension between fragility and resilience, echoing the conditions required for life to take hold and persist.
The works are informed by Lange’s long-standing interest in more-than-human ecologies—particularly the often-overlooked systems of exchange that occur at micro scales. Lichens, fungi, and biological soil crusts operate through collaboration and interdependence, quietly sustaining the environments they inhabit. Porcellana Biota builds on this thinking, proposing a field of entities that appear both individual and interconnected, as if part of a larger, unseen network.
In their unglazed, white surfaces, the sculptures resist overt description, instead inviting close observation. Light moves across their contours, revealing subtle shifts in form—growths, openings, and accumulations that suggest processes rather than fixed identities. These are forms in a state of becoming.
Through this series, Lange reflects on the conditions that support regeneration and continuity. The works ask how life begins, how it adapts, and how it persists—offering a quiet meditation on emergence, transformation, and the delicate structures that sustain living systems.
Size: 4.3 x 7.3 x 2.5 cm
Medium: Porcelain
Curated into the HIVE - Ulverstone Tasmanian exhibition Big Small Worlds, Porcellana Biota is an ongoing series of porcelain sculptures inspired by the intricate relationships that exist within natural systems. Drawing on observations of lichens, fungi, mosses and microscopic organisms, each work imagines a speculative life-form; part familiar, part unknown. Together, these hybrid organisms invite us to consider the biodiversity that exists beyond immediate perception and the networks of connection that sustain life.
Artist Statement:
Porcellana Biota extends Christie Lange’s ongoing exploration of ecological systems through material process, presenting a series of biomorphic sculptures in pure white porcelain. These forms draw from the language of seeds, spores, and emergent organisms, occupying a space between the botanical, fungal, and animal. They are not representations of specific species, but speculative bodies—suggesting life at its earliest and most adaptive stages.
Working exclusively in porcelain, Lange engages a material that demands precision, patience, and responsiveness. Its softness in the hand, paired with its transformation through heat into a vitrified, stone-like state, mirrors the cycles of growth and change observed in natural systems. The resulting forms hold a tension between fragility and resilience, echoing the conditions required for life to take hold and persist.
The works are informed by Lange’s long-standing interest in more-than-human ecologies—particularly the often-overlooked systems of exchange that occur at micro scales. Lichens, fungi, and biological soil crusts operate through collaboration and interdependence, quietly sustaining the environments they inhabit. Porcellana Biota builds on this thinking, proposing a field of entities that appear both individual and interconnected, as if part of a larger, unseen network.
In their unglazed, white surfaces, the sculptures resist overt description, instead inviting close observation. Light moves across their contours, revealing subtle shifts in form—growths, openings, and accumulations that suggest processes rather than fixed identities. These are forms in a state of becoming.
Through this series, Lange reflects on the conditions that support regeneration and continuity. The works ask how life begins, how it adapts, and how it persists—offering a quiet meditation on emergence, transformation, and the delicate structures that sustain living systems.
Size: 4.3 x 7.3 x 2.5 cm
Medium: Porcelain