Francis Upritchard was born in New Zealand in 1976 and graduated from Ilam School of Fine Arts in Christchurch in 1997. She now lives and works in London.
She produces unusual, quirky looking sculpted figures made from modelling putty and combines them with tribal artifacts, fabrics and adornments. They range from slightly vulnerable to creepy with slim hands and feet, bejewelled or adorned in rags they seem to have stepped out of a museum. They are ambiguous works that represent a mixture of colourful styles from Asia, South America and Western hippie culture.
She demonstrates incredible versatility using a range of materials from textiles, plastic, bronze, glass and ceramics. Other works she produces could be straight out of an Iron Age burial site and she creates pieces that could represent a whole civilisation – jewellery, cooking vessels, urns, however there doesn’t seem to be any one culture on display. They are exquisitely and skilfully crafted, full of life and colour and are utterly mysterious.
She was recently commissioned to make 3 monumental 7 metre high works for the forecourt of the new Sydney Modern Art Gallery.These works are titled “Here Comes Everybody” and as Francis says “everybody should be welcomed everywhere, especially to a gallery.”
Francis represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2009.
