Olive Pink: Artist, Activist, Gardener

A Life in Flowers

Olive Pink: Artist, Activist & Gardener presents a superb selection of original paintings of the iconic flowers of the Central Australian region, alongside a fascinating biography featuring beautifully reproduced memorabilia of a colourful and unconventional historical Australian figure.

A fiercely independent woman ahead of her time, Olive Pink is best known for her staunch support of the Aboriginal people of Central Australia and for her often feisty encounters with anthropologists, missionaries and local pastoralists. Olive fought hard not only for the rights of the local Arrernte and Warlpiri people, with whom she forged a strong connection, but also to recognise and protect the diversity of the local flora about which she was so passionate.

Olive’s many beautiful paintings express her intimate knowledge and love of the region’s flora: a love that led to her establishing, with the support of Aboriginal gardeners, a flora reserve in Alice Springs, now known as the Olive Pink Botanic Garden. A member of the Hobart botanical artists group Botaniko, Gillian Ward is a reference librarian, researcher, artist, photographer and graphic designer.

Gillian worked for many years at the University of Tasmania Library as a librarian and exhibition curator. While there, she curated a beautiful selection of botanical paintings by Olive entitled ‘Miss Pink’s Wildflowers’, which was drawn from a large collection of Olive’s paintings held at the library. This exhibition inspired Gillian’s ongoing research on Pink’s life and was the impetus for her book.