Ranti Bam: SACRED GROVES

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. Bam has two connected series of sculptures, the Ifas and Abstract Vessels. She creates the Ifas by embracing wet clay against her body to form vessels that collapse, crack and fold. She is interested in how physically connecting with the raw material also makes her feel more spiritually connected with the earth. Inspired by textiles and language, the Abstract Vessels are covered with pattern and colour. Bam pierces the surface of the vessels by hand, revealing the glaze inside. The act of rolling out the clay, puncturing and studding the surface with pattern, painting with glazes, and then firing combines all the elements – earth, air, fire and water. Bam views clay as the most primal material, made of raw earth and water, processed by hands, and the fire of the kiln. She connects this to the concept of the primal feminine, the idea that there is an instinctive source of creation and wildness in all beings. At the SLG, Bam will also debut a new film produced in Osun-Oshogbo, a sacred site of the Yoruba fertility goddess Osun. The film tracks the river’s path and human impact on the landscape.