Ranti Bam: SACRED GROVES

Image: Ranti Bam: Sacred Groves, South London Gallery, London, 2026. Photo: Jo Underhill.

British Nigerian artist Ranti Bam works with sculpture, performance, film and photography. She explores our relationship to the environment through touch, spirituality and healing. Sacred Groves is her first solo institutional exhibition in SLG’s Fire Station galleries.

Her ceramic practice is divided into two connected bodies of work, the Ifas and Abstract Vessels. The Ifas are large stoneware sculptures, created by Bam embracing wet clay against her body to form vessels that collapse, crack and fold. At the SLG she will exhibit monumental new sculptures, her largest works to date, which are finished with a metallic glaze that reflects the body. Bam is interested in the rawness of the clay she works with, and

connecting with the material enables her to connect back to the earth.

Bam views clay as a language and divining tool so her practice sits closer to ritual or

ancestral vessel traditions than studio ceramics. In the studio, her works have spirits and

function like votive offerings. The word “Ifa” in Yoruba means both ifá, a spiritual system

of divination, and I –fàá, to hold something close. Her new body of work, Sacred Groves,

continues this inquiry into space as holding.

As part of her SLG exhibition, Bam will debut a film produced in Ọṣun-Ọṣogbo, a sacred

site of the Yoruba fertility goddess Osun. Sacred groves are sites of gathering and quiet

presence, where what is felt by the believer carries more weight than what is seen.

📍 South London Gallery

Peckham, South London

Until 23 August 2026

Free entry