Francis Upritchard
| Francis Upritchard | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1976 (age 40–41) New Plymouth, New Zealand |
| Nationality | New Zealand |
| Education | Ilam School of Fine Arts |
| Known for | Sculpture |
| Awards | Walters Prize |
Francis Upritchard (born 1976 in New Plymouth, New Zealand) is a London-based contemporary artist. In 2009 she represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale.
Upritchard graduated from the Ilam School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury, School of Fine Arts in 1997. She had initially thought to study painting, but became interested in sculpture during her first year.
Soon after graduating, Upritchard moved to London.
Upritchard's early work often referenced museum displays, collections of artefacts, and ancient cultures. She often combined found objects with her own hand-made additions, such as sculpted heads made from modelleing clay of dogs, monkeys and birds inserted into the necks of ceramic and glass vessels, or fastened onto pieces of sporting equipment like hockey sticks and cricket bats. Other works showed faux-antique delicate instruments in shabby velvet-lined boxes. She also became known for her sculptures that replicated shrunken heads, resting on display cabinets or mounted on small pedestals. Made of plaster and paper mache, the heads referenced mokomokai, tattooed shrunken heads made by New Zealand's indigenous Māori, but the features were those of Pākeha peoples.
In 2006/2007, Upritchard decided to start exploring the human figure in her work. In a 2012 newspaper profile she said: 'I didn't think there was so much good figurative work in contemporary sculpture. [...] I went to Munich and saw [the 15th-century sculptor] Erasmus Grasser's Morris Dancers.' Upritchard's figures are made of polymer clay laid over wire armatures; their skin is painted in everything from neutral tones to brightly coloured grids, and they are variously naked and clothed in robes and gowns, also made by the artist. Curator Anne Ellegood writes:
Some hail from long-ago eras—protagonists of medieval mythology like the knight, the harlequin, the jester—while others are from the more recent past—beatniks, hippies, and other nonconformists. Various figures are identified by their vocation—music teacher, potato seller, psychic—or distilled to a primary, and often less than laudatory, characteristic, such as “liar,” “misanthrope,” “ninny,” or “nincompoop.”
The influences on Upritchard's figurative sculptures are various: the figures in the Bayeux tapestry, Japanese Noh theatre, 1960s psychedelic portraiture, Grasser's wooden figures, the bronze figures of the Chola dynasty, court jesters and medieval performers. Writers about these works often reference counter-cultural movements, hippies, shamans and marionettes when describing them. Comparisons have been made to the earlier work of Bruce Conner and Paul Thek and Upritchard's closer contemporaries Ryan Trecartin, Lizzie Fitch and Saya Woolfalk.
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