Panel Talk: Awe in Nature

Join an esteemed panel of thinkers, makers and gardeners to consider how awe plays a role in our relationship with the living world. 

This panel will feature renowned horticulturist and Super Bloom author Jac Semmler, South Australian artist Bridget Currie- launching her new body of work 'Each One a World' at Carrick Hill in partnership with AGSA, Tessa Leon co-founder of Human.Kind Studios, student/teacher of mindful practices, psychotherapy, and eco-dharma, and Danni Zuvela, curator and artistic director of ACE.

Held at the Art Gallery of South Australia as part of First Friday, this panel: Awe in Nature will think about the intersections of nature and art. 

Nature Festival 2024 presents the theme of Awe and Wonder, inviting us to delve into the proximities of practice; near and far vistas, the macro and the micro, places of home and country, to lead us to a better relationship with the living world. Such oscillations remind us that we are not only part of nature, but part of the many processes which shape our relationship to it.

Bridget Currie is a Tarntanya based artist who works across a range of modalities including sculpture, performance, drawing, writing, public art and installation. Her practice foregrounds creating embodied states that call attention to materiality, with the artist interested in bringing the invisible, internal aspects of experience into the external physical world.

Tessa Leon is a teacher of meditation and contemplative sciences. As Co-founder of Human.Kind Studios she has spent the past decade guiding thousands of people to shape their presence in the world. Blending mindful practices, psychotherapy, and eco-dharma, her work seeks to spark wonder, reconstruct meaning, and help find fluency in our shared humanity. She has recently launched The Circular Initiative, a multigenerational habitat regeneration project in Myponga, and received SA's 40 Under Award for business leadership. Through dedicated enquiry into the mystery and art of living, Tessa seeks to be a sensemaker, a provider of solace, and a patron saint of nuance in today's complex and tender world.

Jac Semmler is a plant specialist, advising on living beauty and the future of gardening. She is also a contributing collaborator on the installation Pleasance at Art Gallery South Australia (September 27th - October 19th). As Director of Super Bloom, she leads an emerging plant practice that brings dynamic living beauty, diversity and plant specialists to projects, people and places. Super Bloom plant practice explores gardening as an immersive art form, collaborating, and tending ideas across fields and industries.

Danni Zuvela is an artist, writer and curator. She is the Artistic Director of South Australia’s ACE contemporary Art Gallery. Her work often explores questions of non-human subjectivity, and relationships between the senses and society. Through research, critical writing, residencies, exhibitions, discursive public programs and publications, Danni engages with artists and non-artists in the production of relationships and the exchange of knowledge. With a background in experimental music and performance, her practice uses research and ideas to fuel experiences and encounters where the natural world is often a protagonist.

This panel will be moderated by Amber Cronin, Nature Festivals arts curator, and a cross-disciplinary artist whose work spans sculpture, drawing, installation, sound and social interventions..Amber Cronin is a co-director of Fallow, a contributing collaborator on the installation Pleasance at Art Gallery South Australia (September 27th - October 19th).