Francis Upritchard
New Zealand, England, Italy
Born: New Plymouth, New Zealand 1976
Francis Upritchard, photo: Brigitte Niedermair
Biography
Francis Upritchard has achieved international renown for her idiosyncratic figurative sculptures.
Born in New Zealand in 1976, Upritchard graduated from Canterbury Art School in Christchurch in 1998 and moved to England that year. Between 2001 and 2003 she co-founded and co-directed the artist-run gallery Bart Wells Institute in London with Luke Gotellier. She now lives in England, Italy and New Zealand.
Upritchard represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2009. In 2010 she had a solo show, In die Hôhle, at Secession, Vienna. Other solo shows include: A Long Wait, Cincinnati Arts Centre, and A Hand of Cards, Nottingham Contemporary, in 2012; and Potato Poem at MIMOCA in Japan and Mandrake at Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin in 2013. In 2015 she had a solo show at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, followed by the Children’s Commission at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Between 2016 and 2017 a large touring survey exhibition of her work, titled Jealous Saboteurs, travelled to Melbourne, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Since then, Wetwang Slack, a huge presentation encompassing two years of work, has been shown at The Curve in the Barbican Centre, London, in 2018, and an adjusted version of that show, Big Fish Eat Small Fish, was presented at Museum Dhondt Dhaenens in Ghent in 2020.
In 2018 the Art Gallery of New South Wales acquired a group of ceramic objects by Upritchard. From a distance, these jars and vessels could be confused with the kind of 1970s studio pottery that Upritchard was familiar with as a child in New Zealand. However, closer inspection reveals a series of faces that imbue the vessels with a mysterious sense of ritual and inner life.
In 2020 Upritchard was one of the artists commissioned by the Art Gallery to create work for the Sydney Modern Project, the transformation of the institution into a two-building art museum campus. The new building’s welcome plaza is home to Upritchard’s towering and richly textured figures – inspired by mythology, folklore and the surrounding Moreton Bay fig trees. These playful bronze beings are workers, collaborators, creators and guardians who, in the artist’s words, ‘ready your mind to be receptive to anything’.
