Goodman Gallery London and October Gallery are proud to present two concurrent exhibitions by El Anatsui, widely regarded as one of the most influential contemporary artists working today. Anatsui’s new wooden sculptures mark a significant moment in his artistic trajectory, evolving from his foundational use of the medium during the 1980s and 1990s. The two exhibitions of Anatsui’s most recent work underscore the artist’s presence in the much-anticipated Nigerian Modernism at Tate Modern, opening 8 October 2025.
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The new wooden sculptures are the focus of the two coinciding exhibitions in London and reflect Anatsui's continued curiosity with material and form through the medium that defined his early body of work while still studying at KNUST University in Kumasi, Ghana, in 1969. His approach was shaped in part by the Sankofa movement in post-independent Ghana, championed a return to Indigenous African arts and sculptural traditions as sources of inspiration as a conscious response to the post-colonial historical context and the imported British art school curriculum. The term Sankofa exhorts the importance of learning from the past, reclaiming lost knowledge, and integrating these lessons into the present to build a stronger future.
Made from timbers salvaged from the Nsukka Market in Nigeria, where Anatsui had his principal studio until recently, the wooden reliefs are comprised of multiple narrow strips, arranged in a horizontal format, one next to each other, which can be reconfigured at will. On the surface, the panels are carved into different textures - lines, scratches and burns - as well as painted with various motifs. These varied tessellated forms evoke an abstract cartography, stretching across the surfaces. They are filled with the sense of play and experimentation that has coursed through the entirety of Anatsui's career.
From the outset of his career, Anatsui has employed various materials, from the circular wood plaques of the late seventies, made with common market trays, to clay and the freestanding wooden sculpture of the eighties. At that time, he also began working in relief, juxtaposing planks of varying widths and lengths while exploring traditional symbols. Using a chainsaw, he revealed its raw and expressive potential as a wood-carving tool, experimenting with processes of fragmentation, reconstruction and surface-making. Later, he would add natural earth and primary colours in tempera and acrylic paint, pushing the medium even further. Wood remains a cornerstone of Anatsui’s material practice as he explores ever new ways to reveal the sculptural forms inherent in the unworked material. The artist's work is further contextualised and celebrated in an accompanying essay by Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, the inaugural Director of V&A East, London.
As a collaborative parcours across London on Saturday 11th October, Goodman Gallery will host an opening celebration from 4.00 – 6.00PM followed by October Gallery at 6.30 – 8.30PM.
He encourages a fluid approach to the presentation of his artworks, allowing curators, collectors and art handlers to orient them at will. Similar to the large-scale bottle top works, the wood reliefs can be rearranged each time they are presented, allowing for multiplicity and openness in the interpretation of meaning.
Artist Bio
El Anatsui (b.1944, Anyako, Ghana) is an internationally acclaimed artist who transforms simple materials into complex assemblages that create distinctive visual impact. Anatsui uses resources typically discarded such as liquor bottle caps and cassava graters to create sculptures that defy categorisation. Anatsui’s use of these materials reflects his interest in reuse, transformation, and an intrinsic desire to connect to his continent while transcending the limitations of place. His work interrogates the history of colonialism and draws connections between consumption, waste and the environment. But at the core of Anatsui’s work is his unique formal language that distinguishes his practice.
Anatsui is well-known for large scale sculptures composed of thousands of folded and crumpled pieces of metal sourced from local alcohol recycling stations and bound together with copper wire. These intricate works, which can grow to be massive in scale, are both luminous and weighty, meticulously fabricated yet malleable. He leaves the installations open and encourages the works to take different forms every time they are installed.
In 2023, Anatsui was awarded the highly reputable Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. He was also included in TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2023. His major solo exhibition titled Behind the Red Moon, at the Tate Modern, explored elemental forces interwoven with human histories of power, oppression, dispersion, and survival. In 2019, 'El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale,' a major career survey curated by Okwui Enwezor, opened at Haus der Kunst and travelled to Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Kunstmuseum Bern and Guggenheim Bilbao in 2020. In 2015, Anatsui was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, the Venice Biennale’s highest honour. Anatsui’s solo exhibition 'Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,' was organized by the Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio (2012), and travelled to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (2013); then to the Bass Museum of Art in Miami, Florida (2014); and concluded at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, California (2015).
Collections include: African Studies Gallery, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria; Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio; Asele Institute, Nimo, Nigeria; The British Museum, London, UK; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Jordan National Gallery of Arts, Amman, Jordan; Musée Ariana, Geneva, Switzerland; and Osaka Foundation of Culture, Osaka, Japan.
Anatsui currently lives and works between Ghana and Nigeria.
