close reader: complex notophyll vine forest is a companion to Clare Milledge’s solo exhibition complex notophyll vine forest: ground-proof (2025-26) at Lismore Regional Gallery. The publication is intended as a stand-alone book rather than a traditional exhibition catalogue, and includes a collage of subject matter and visuals ranging from historical ecological articles advocating for the preservation of endangered rainforests, to childhood photos, sketchbook pages, and newly commissioned texts. close reader is richly dispersed with artwork from Milledge’s practice across the past decade.

Clare Milledge has cultivated a transdisciplinary, materially brave creative language across the past two decades that moves effortlessly between text-based, abstract and figurative compositions and soundscapes. Hers is an ethno-botanical lens that tangles folklore, art history, magic, contemporary culture and the environmental sciences to re-posture ancient myths. In parallel she creates new narratives that probe the nature-human dichotomy and imagine instead more mutable, viscous bonds.

Milledge has featured in numerous national and international exhibitions including complex notophyll vine forest: ground-proof, Lismore Regional Gallery (2025-26); From the other side, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2023); Living Patterns: Contemporary Australian Abstraction, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2023); rīvus, Biennale of Sydney (2022); NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2020); Strigiformes: Binocular, Binaural, Museet for Samtidskunst, Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo, Norway (2017); and Magic Object, Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia (2016). Milledge was an artist in residence at Artspace, Sydney (2015–2016). Her work is held in significant private and institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; and Artbank, Australia. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney in 2013. Milledge is commercially represented by STATION.

Published by: Lismore Regional Gallery
Size: 28 (h) x 22 (w) cm
Cover: Soft
Pages: 86