Lynne Uptin: The Ancients
Highly anticpated, this is Lynne's first exhibition at Bett Gallery since being awarded the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Best Botanical Art Exhibit, along with a Gold Medal, at the 2024 RHS Botanical Art & Photography Show at the Saatchi Gallery, London. This entire suite of winning work was subsequently acquired by the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
The Ancients - plants that were once prolific tens of millions of years ago, still cling on in Lutruwita/Tasmania's remnant temperate rainforests.
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, but 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.
Trained at the National Art School Sydney, Lynne practiced as a leading illustrator in Sydney for 13 years before owning and opening two art galleries, a ceramic and a glass art studio. In 2021 Lynne was awarded the UK Society of Botanical Artists Dip SBA (Dist.) also receiving the SBA Award of Excellence for the highest overall marks on the 3 year course. Lynne's first exhbition at Bett Gallery in 2022, Banks' Banksias was a complete sell out, with her highly anticipated second exhibition, Kunanyi - A Botanical Jounrney equally as successful.
For her previous exhibitions, Lynne drew much of her inspiration from her garden on the D’Entrecasteaux Channel at Middleton, where she cultivated many of the distinctive Gondwanan plants that became isolated when Tasmania separated from Antarctica some 40 million years ago. From her new studio in Battery Point, she now looks to kunanyi/Mount Wellington—a miraculous remnant of temperate wilderness—for similar inspiration. The collections of the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens and the Tasmanian Herbarium are also close at hand to support her practice. Lynne is an Artist Member of the Florilegium of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney and a Fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists in London.
