Carita Coultard’s new watercolour exhibition at Olive Pink Botanic Gardens brings the disappearing foods of the Central Desert into sharp focus. Drawing on memories of bush onion, bush potato and wild sultanas gathered around Hermannsburg, the artist paints each plant in delicate detail while pairing the English name with her Western Arrernte terms. The series is both a celebration of ancient bounty and a lament for what the landscape has lost.

What makes the show especially resonant is the material itself – the paintings are rendered on handmade buffel paper produced in the Many Hands art centre studio. Coultard describes the labor‑intensive process of soaking, boiling and drying the invasive grass until it becomes a pliable sheet, then layering pigment over it. The rough texture of the substrate mirrors the stubborn spread of the weed it once was.

Buffel grass, introduced in the 1960s to curb erosion and feed cattle, has become a fire‑fueling monoculture across the Alice Springs region. Volunteers along the Todd River have been clearing “buffel bust” sites, while scientists warn that the ecological and financial costs of its dominance far outweigh any pastoral benefit. The exhibition therefore acts as a visual protest, urging viewers to confront a plant that now smothers the very foods it once coexisted with.

Recent economic assessments underline the urgency, estimating societal costs up to sixty times the benefits to the grazing industry. Calls for coordinated management and federal funding echo through the gallery walls, turning the show into a platform for policy debate as much as artistic expression. In this blend of craft, ecology and activism, Coultard’s work reminds us that art can illuminate the hidden battles shaping our environment.

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