Image: South London Gallery
South London Gallery will present ‘Ranti Bam: Sacred Groves’ from 1 May to 23 August 2026 in its Fire Station Galleries. The free exhibition is billed as British Nigerian artist Ranti Bam’s first solo institutional exhibition and brings together sculpture, performance, film and photography in a project focused on the environment, spirituality and healing.
The gallery’s exhibition page says Bam works across those media to explore the relationship between people and the natural world through touch and material processes. At the centre of ‘Sacred Groves’ are two connected series of sculptures, ‘Ifas’ and ‘Abstract Vessels’. The ‘Ifas’ are formed when Bam embraces wet clay against her body, creating vessels that collapse, crack and fold. The gallery describes the process as one in which physical contact with clay becomes linked to a spiritual connection with the earth.
‘Abstract Vessels’ develop that inquiry through pattern, colour and surface intervention. According to the gallery, the vessels are inspired by textiles and language, and Bam pierces them by hand to reveal glaze beneath the surface. The making process — rolling out clay, puncturing and studding it, painting with glazes and firing — is presented as a sequence that combines earth, air, fire and water. The artist also frames clay as a primal material, made of raw earth and water and transformed by hand and kiln.
The exhibition will also debut a new film produced in Osun-Oshogbo, a sacred site of the Yoruba fertility goddess Osun. South London Gallery says the film follows the river’s path and human impact on the landscape, extending the exhibition’s attention to ecological relationships and the spiritual significance of place. The gallery’s email newsletter described the show as exploring our relationship to the environment through touch, spirituality and healing.
‘Sacred Groves’ is being shown alongside Paulo Nimer Pjota: ‘Encantados’ in the gallery’s Main Gallery from the same dates, but the two exhibitions are presented separately. Pjota’s exhibition runs in the Main Gallery, while Bam’s is in the Fire Station Galleries. The South London Gallery lists both as free exhibitions and gives the opening hours for the Fire Station Galleries as Wednesday 12-9pm and Thursday to Sunday 12-6pm.
Bam lives and works in Paris, according to the gallery. Her international exhibition history on the exhibition page includes ‘Anima’ at James Cohan, New York, in 2024, ‘Hard/Soft: Textiles and Ceramics in Contemporary Art’ at the Museum of Applied Arts in Austria in 2023, and the Liverpool Biennial in 2023. The page also notes that in June 2026 she will unveil a permanent public artwork for ‘Climate Clock’, curated by Alice Sharp, Invisible Dust for Oulu26 Finland, European Capital of Culture, and that she was invited to the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia by Koyo Kouoh.
