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Vivien Lightfoot and Jenny Manning: Entwined. Belconnen Arts Centre, West Gallery, 118 Emu Bank, Belconnen. Until July 3, 2022. belcoarts.com.au.

Many Canberra gardeners know well the truism: if it grows well, it is a weed, and if it grows exceptionally well, then it is a noxious weed. A similar campaign takes place in the bush where introduced species have run wild and strangled or are strangling struggling native endemic plants. Frequently, well-intentioned bands of volunteers will descend onto the grassy slopes of bushland surrounding their suburbs and will endeavour to eradicate the invasive species that have become entwined within the local ecosystem.

Vivien Lightfoot and Jenny Manning are two well-known local artists who have been exhibiting for decades and who are friends and have worked as colleagues as educators at the National Gallery of Australia. They are both concerned with their local environment being affected by introduced invasive species and impacted by climate change.

Lightfoot is an exceptionally creative and versatile artist whose main art form is sculpture made from clay - in this exhibition, mainly white raku, buff raku trachyte, earthenware terracotta or white paper clay. Her forms are hand built, immaculately finished, and delicately coloured. By adopting three-dimensional forms, her various invasive species have a visceral quality, they are very tactile, animated, beautiful and at the same time threatening. In many of her pieces she introduces a sense of drama and enjoys the layering of cultural references in the narratives that she spins around her works.

Her Mistletoe - foe is a three-dimensional earthenware terracotta piece that is about half a metre high. The main form in the sculpture is the seed pod from the Kurrajong tree (Brachychiton populneus), which has been beautifully moulded and ornamentally decorated. To illustrate the drama between the noble native tree and the encroaching parasitic mistletoe (Viscum album), the pod is engulfed with a textile pattern that she has adapted from a textile pattern from William Morris. In the catalogue she notes, "Mistletoe has many ancient symbolic meanings in Europe but it can be deadly to our native trees."

Another of Lightfoot's memorable pieces of similar dimensions to the Mistletoe sculpture but made of white paper clay is the Hooded caps orchid - at risk. I assume that the reference is to the hooded caladenia (Stegostyla cucullata) that the artist shows growing out of a vase. There is a subtle opulence in the work and although the orchid is whole and possesses a sensuous beauty, the artist sees it as being threatened by encroaching weeds and the changing ecosystem.

Manning is predominantly a painter and printmaker who adores a decorative ornamental surface that spreads across the picture plane. Her Banksia with Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is an easel-scale painting where a drama is played out with the imported Asian honeysuckle choking the native banksia. She cleverly develops a tapestry-like surface that glows with an inner luminosity.

Manning's smaller pieces, including the exquisitely worked Lantana (Lantana camira), celebrate the beauty of noxious invasive species. Introduced as a garden ornament, the lantana has been a curse to farmers as it spreads as an impenetrable thicket that poisons both stock and native animals.

This is an attractive and seductive exhibition that in a skilful and loving manner depicts the risks that our natural environment is facing. These risks are man-made and frequently were deliberately introduced into Australia to beautify a land that newcomers from Europe found drab, hostile and monotonous. A century later, we are are seeking to restore the country to its original state - before European settlement.

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