PANEL DISCUSSION - SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER
The Significance of the Arts in Environmental Advocacy
Art has long been a powerful catalyst for igniting public dialogue and inspiring community engagement on environmental issues.
With the backdrop of Lynne Uptin's exhibition The Ancients as a catalyst, please join an outstanding panel of writers and visual artists whose work invites audiences to engage with issues not just intellectually but emotionally. Does their work help foster a deeper commitment to environmental responsibility? What are the issues being faced here, and what can we do to address them?
Lynne Uptin: Internationally acclaimed botanical artist
Philip Wolfhagen: Leading Australian contemporary painter
Andrew Darby: Prize winning nature writer, author of The Ancients: Discovering the world's oldest surviving trees in wild Tasmania
Tabatha Badger: MP, author and wilderness photographer
These plant lineages have endured for millions of years. They have fortuitously avoided growing on the wrong side of volcanoes, lived through ice ages and survived through extinction events.
— Lynne Uptin
Tasmania is a global centre of plant palaeoendemism, containing relics of some of the world's oldest plant lineages. Palaeoendemics are ancient survivors, once widespread, changing environments now restrict their geographic survival and now occupy a climate space that is globally rare. High levels of palaeoendemism occur widely in western Tasmania, particularly at or slightly above the tree line in relatively undisturbed vegetation, constantly moist climates lacking extreme temperatures, and in open vegetation with rare or no fire.
