PRESS & PUBLICATIONS
Our pick of 10 exhibitions to see this week — in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Paris, and Cairns
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A first look at ‘Viva Arte Viva’ at the Arsenale.
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10 Exhibitions Opening This Week
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10 Exhibitions Opening This Week
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About 85 million years ago, New Zealand broke off and floated away from Australia and Antarctica. Isolated for millennia, the islands’ plants and animals evolved in peculiar ways—giant, flightless birds, ground-walking bats, and enormous, carnivorous snails ruled the land. It’s as if the island developed in an alternative history. Likewise, the lanky, multicolored figures that inhabit the world of New Zealand-born sculptor Francis Upritchard also seem to have evolved out of a different history, with their own esoteric garb, body decoration, rituals and artifacts. Upritchard’s uncanny yet familiar world, however, springs forth not from a faraway, isolated land, but from the artist’s interior and intuitive process.
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In this video, sculptor Francis Upritchard speaks about her experience working with the space of a palazzo at the Venice Biennale where she represented New Zealand in 2009. She describes her practice of sculpting by hand, quickly, and intuitively as working “with your body, in a way, rather than your mind.”
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Art:Concept is pleased to bring the works of Ulla von Brandenburg (b. 1974, Karlsruhe, Germany), Haris Epaminonda (b. 1980, Nicosia, Cyprus) and Francis Upritchard (b. 1976, New Plymouth, New Zealand) together on occasion of a collective exhibition.
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Francis Upritchard has often been cast by critics as a voodoo priestess, enchanting the detritus of everyday life, slipping the manna of indigenous
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For her full-scale New York gallery debut, Francis Upritchard – a London-based New Zealander who represented her country at the 2009 Venice Biennale –
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Jack Smith is the cult legend beloved of cult legends. John Waters called him "the only true underground film-maker".
Read MoreFor her full-scale New York gallery debut, Francis Upritchard – a London-based New Zealander who represented her country at the 2009 Venice Biennale –
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Mark Amery says restaging New Zealand's contribution to the Venice Biennale back home is 'akin to putting ships in bottles.'
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The latest in Camden Arts Centre’s artist-curated shows is the brainchild of 2005 Turner Prize winner Simon Starling.
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The town of Ipswich is not known for its art. It has a museum and various art galleries, but it is perhaps more celebrated as a port, as the birthplace
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Francis Upritchard, New Zealand’s 2009 Venice Biennale representative, is having her first major solo exhibition in the United Kingdom. A
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There are two kinds of stands at Art Fairs: those dedicated to a single artist and those showcasing a gallery’s stable as a whole.
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Martino Gamper does extraordinary things with chairs - and awkward corners. The first time Italian furniture designer Martino Gamper came
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Born in 1976 in New Plymouth, New Zealand, Francis Upritchard lives and works in London. Creating sculpture and installation-based works, Upritchard subtly comments through her practice upon a colonial history of cultural pillage, reversing its processes by transforming found junk into carefully-crafted faux historical artifacts, such as plastic Wedgewood vases and copies of Egyptian treasures. Extending her inquiry to the natural history museum, she fashions strange creatures that appear as disturbing missing links within the evolutionary chain. Upritchard carefully stages her often small-scale sculptures using various display strategies, at times lending her pieces an unmistakable presence through the use of museum display cases and curiosity cabinets, while allowing them, in other instances, to seamlessly blend into the decor. Far from being invested with nostalgic sentimentality, the found materials and pieces of furniture that make up her works playfully address the ubiquitous of connoisseurship and cult value, temporarily endowed with the aura of priceless relics. Upritchard’s recent work includes a series of small figurines fashioned out of rainbow colored modeling paste that depict hybrid human figures, as if the mythical idols of a contemporary New Age sect.
Francis Upritchard has recently presented solo exhibitions at Francis Upritchard: Dark Resters, Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand (2016), Francis Upritchard: Jealous Saboteurs, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne, Australia (2016), Francis Upritchard and Martino Gamper, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY (2016), Francis Upritchard, Hammer Projects, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2014), Children’s Comission: Francis Upritchard: Do What You Will, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2014),Secession, Vienna (2010), the 53rd Venice Biennale as the New Zealand national representation, Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Cannaregio (2009), Artspace Sydney (2008) and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth (2008). Her work has also been shown as part of “Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art” at Barbican, London (2008), “Making Worlds” at the Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland (2007), “Six Feet Under; Autopsie unseres Umgang mit Toten” at Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern (2006) and “Around the World in Eighty Days” at the ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts London, London (2006). She was a finalist for the Becks Futures prize at the ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts London in 2003.
Francis Upritchard is represented by Kate MacGarry, London and Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland.
For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art
