The Art of Space: James Okafor's New Sculptures

Material, Memory, and the Handmade Object

James Okafor's studio in Peckham is part workshop, part archive. Offcuts of reclaimed timber are stacked along one wall. Wax moulds hang from hooks. A half-finished bronze figure sits on a plinth in the centre of the room, its surface still bearing the seam marks from the cast.

"I grew up around craftsmen," Okafor says. "My grandfather was a carpenter in Lagos. My uncle repaired engines. I've always been drawn to the kind of knowledge that lives in the hands — the knowledge you can't learn from a book."

Forest Memory

His new large-scale work Forest Memory, now in our West Wing, combines reclaimed English oak with cast bronze. The oak came from a barn in Suffolk demolished during the floods of 2021. "I was interested in the idea of wood that has already lived a life — that has history in its grain. And then the bronze, which is so ancient as a material, which has been used to make objects of ritual and significance for thousands of years. Putting them together feels like a conversation across time."

Resonance Series

His smaller bronze torsos — the Resonance series — are more intimate. Cast using the ancient lost-wax process, each figure is unique. The surfaces are deliberately left imperfect, the casting seams visible as a kind of inherited mark.

"I'm not interested in perfection. Perfection is death. I want the mark of making to be visible. I want you to know that a human being made this."