Francis Upritchard
BEMIS CENTER
For a little over a decade, Francis Upritchard has been creating a richly imaginative world populated by figurative sculptures that tangle craft and fashion and evoke diverse cultural histories. Their intermediate scale—between puppet and life-size figure—emancipates these figures from the burden of representation. With their oblique references to shamanism, tribalism, and a host of counter-cultural and alternative-lifestyle practices, they evoke types rather than individuals. At times, Upritchard has referred to them as “husks.”
I don’t know you like that features three of these sculptures, selected from different bodies of works. Vivian greets visitors as they enter the exhibition, enticing them with her languor and the equivocal reflection on her spectacles. Desert Hippie interjects in Gallery 1, turning their back to visitors, and insisting on a multiplicity of viewpoints—they are always, by design, looking elsewhere. Liar troubles scale and perspective in Gallery 2, pointing the way into the next spaces. Dispersed across three spaces, these works echo each other; they make viewing a practice of call-and-response, a weaving of connections. In this, the works create spaces for visitors to project themselves—welcoming spaces to articulate and inscribe their experiences.
BIOGRAPHY
Francis Upritchard is an artist based in London and New Zealand. Drawing on a wide variety of materials, her work draws on figurative sculpture, craft traditions, and design, blending references from literature to Japanese folklore and Indian miniatures to Romanesque frescoes, and ancient sculptures and burial grounds to science fiction. Francis Upritchard’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Barbican Centre, London (2018–2019); Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand (2017); Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne, Australia (2016); City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2014); Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2013); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2013); Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2012); and Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2012). In 2009, she represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale.
Francis Upritchard
BEMIS CENTER
For a little over a decade, Francis Upritchard has been creating a richly imaginative world populated by figurative sculptures that tangle craft and fashion and evoke diverse cultural histories. Their intermediate scale—between puppet and life-size figure—emancipates these figures from the burden of representation. With their oblique references to shamanism, tribalism, and a host of counter-cultural and alternative-lifestyle practices, they evoke types rather than individuals. At times, Upritchard has referred to them as “husks.”
I don’t know you like that features three of these sculptures, selected from different bodies of works. Vivian greets visitors as they enter the exhibition, enticing them with her languor and the equivocal reflection on her spectacles. Desert Hippie interjects in Gallery 1, turning their back to visitors, and insisting on a multiplicity of viewpoints—they are always, by design, looking elsewhere. Liar troubles scale and perspective in Gallery 2, pointing the way into the next spaces. Dispersed across three spaces, these works echo each other; they make viewing a practice of call-and-response, a weaving of connections. In this, the works create spaces for visitors to project themselves—welcoming spaces to articulate and inscribe their experiences.
BIOGRAPHY
Francis Upritchard is an artist based in London and New Zealand. Drawing on a wide variety of materials, her work draws on figurative sculpture, craft traditions, and design, blending references from literature to Japanese folklore and Indian miniatures to Romanesque frescoes, and ancient sculptures and burial grounds to science fiction. Francis Upritchard’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Barbican Centre, London (2018–2019); Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand (2017); Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne, Australia (2016); City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand (2016); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2014); Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2013); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2013); Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2012); and Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2012). In 2009, she represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale.