LONDON.- Griffin Gallery presents Earth Wind & Fire, a celebration of contemporary Australian Indigenous art, and Western European contemporary art, presenting 6 esteemed Australian Indigenous artists alongside 7 British artists. The exhibition is co-curated by Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi, director of JGM gallery, London and Juan Bolivar, artist and curator also based in London.

Earth Wind & Fire offers a fresh look at contemporary indigenous Australian art, and it’s rich and unbroken tradition of 60,000 years. The exhibition reflects the similarities of conceptual theme and craftsmanship between northern and southern hemisphere artists, with treatments and motifs such as home-made pigments, symbolism, abstraction, depictions of nature, and the celebration of culture; both ancient and modern.

Curator Jennifer Guerrini Maraldi was first drawn to the fine art of Australia’s contemporary Indigenous artists after purchasing a large painting by Freddie Timms from a Christie’s contemporary auction in Sydney in 1990. Jennifer now represents a wide selection of contemporary indigenous Australian artists, and regularly travels to Australia visiting remote communities in the North Kimberley, Central and Western Deserts, the Northern Territory and Tiwi Islands where she meets and interacts with a wide group of artists to source artwork personally. Jennifer was born in Australia and living in the UK for over three decades has strengthened her fascination and love of Australia’s landscape and first people.

Among Indigenous artists represented by Jennifer at JGM Gallery include septuagenarian Kittey Malarvie, who paints in rich natural ochres, depicting the pattered ground of “luga” cracked mud flats, as well as reflections in milky water where she played as a child south west of Kununurra. Mawukura Jimmy Nerrimah’s paintings represent his memories of country and desert water holes, far out in the Great Sandy Desert at Millingana. The subjects painted by Australia’s Indigenous artists is about country and a traditional way of life which has recently been dated back 80,000 years.

Juan Bolivar is an artist and curator. In 2001 he initiated TRAILER an artist collective utilising temporary locations to stage exhibitions such as 'Guns and Roses' (2002), 'Godzilla' (2003) and 'Cinderella' (2004) - and since, going on to curate over 40 exhibitions as an independent curator most notably 'Dawnbreakers' (2008) at John Hansard Gallery. Bolivar is part of Turps Gallery's curatorial board and an Associate Lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts.

Juan Bolivar presents British artists including Sigrid Holmwood who makes home-grown pigments from plants, and uses the figure of the peasant in her paintings and through an adopted persona. Sigrid’s work comments on the exclusion of European peasant culture and the suppression of indigenous pigment making technologies and practices through Western modernity and colonialism. Parallels can be made between Sigrid’s practice revisiting the traditional ways of making paint, and indigenous Australian artists’ continuing practice of earth pigment into paint. John Stark makes highly labored oil paintings that depict mythical landscapes full of symbolism. John is inspired by the Babylonian belief in opposite elements like day and night, and hot and cold. Comparisons can be drawn to indigenous Australian paintings, that also use symbols for elements such as earth, wind and fire. John Stark has traveled extensively in South Korea and has recently moved to the small Scottish town of Greenlaw with a population of 661.

The exhibition examines the use of abstraction, colour and pattern employed by Richard Kirwan, Daniel Sturgis and Ralph Anderson in comparison to the use of similar themes by the contemporary school of indigenous Australian art. Earth Wind & Fire presents work with kind thanks to the estate of Ben Cove. Ben Cove was young talented artist who lived with the condition osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bones). Having been a full-time wheelchair user all his life, Ben's work was gaining international acclaim when he passed away in 2016 aged 42. His painting ‘Freeloader’ has just been acquired by the prestigious Arts Council Collection. John Greenwood burst into the art scene in 1992 exhibiting in the first YBA exhibition alongside Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. In the late 90's John stopped painting; concentrating on raising a family. After a 15-year hiatus he is now making new work and exhibiting again.

Earth Wind & Fire features the indigenous Australian artists: Kittey Malarvie | Lily Nungarrayi Hargraves | Freddie Timms | Ngarrlia Tommy May |Mawnhura Jimmy Nerrimah | Keturan Nangala Zimran and the British artists Ralph Anderson | Ben Cove | John Greenwood | Sigrid Holmwood | Richard Kirwan | John Stark and Daniel Sturgis