Installation view: Paper, Creature, Stone, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

Francis Upritchard was born in 1976 in New Plymouth, New Zealand. She lives and works in London and New Zealand. Upritchard’s work draws on figurative sculpture, blending references from literature to ancient sculptures, and burial grounds to science fiction. Her installations showcase a wide variety of materials; her distinctive figurative sculptures are made using polymer plastic, amorphous mythological figures in balata - a natural rubber, bronze dinosaurs, glass vessels and ceramic urns.

Installation view: Paper, Creature, Stone, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū.

“Upritchard questions how we construct a vision for the future through our fractured, partial and often conflicted understanding of the past. She creates a place where histories and archives can be viewed anew through playfully exploring aspects of partiality, misreading and uncanny coincidences. Upritchard’s mini worlds are anti-imperial and non-hierarchical - there is no dominant culture.”

- Heather Galbraith.

Installation view: A Hand of Cards, Nottingham Contemporary, 2012. Courtesy the artist and Nottingham Contemporary. Photo: Andy Keate

Upritchard's solo exhibition opens next month at Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland. The exhibition includes new works in rubber, bronze, stone, glass and plaster that explore both material and aesthetic aspects of human and anthropomorphic forms.

Installation view: Surf 'n' Turf, Kate MacGarry, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Kate MacGarry. Photo: Angus Mill

Francis Upritchard, The Mother and Children, 2021, balata rubber 42 x 56 x 27 cm

Upritchard is one of nine artists selected by Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney to undertake a large-scale commission outside the new Sydney Modern, to be realised in late 2022.

Recent solo exhibitions include Surf ’n’ Turf, Kate MacGarry, London (2022), Paper, Creature, Stone, Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand (2022), Big Fish Eat Little Fish, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Belgium (2020), Wetwang Slack at the Barbican Centre, London (2018-19), Jealous Saboteurs, Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand (2017), Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne, Australia (2016); and at the City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand (2016); The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2014); Potato Poem, the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan (2013).

In 2009 Francis Upritchard represented New Zealand in 53rd Venice Biennale.