About Frances Upritchard

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'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.