Francis Upritchard:
Wetwang Slack

The 30th commission in The Curve programme, New Zealand-born artist Francis Upritchard presents a new series of sculptural interventions. Curator Leila Hasham joins the artist in her studio

Francis Upritchard: Wetwang Slack. Installation View. The Curve, Barbican Centre. 27 September 2018 – 6 January 2019. Photograph by Angus Mill

Francis Upritchard: Wetwang Slack. Installation View. The Curve, Barbican Centre. 27 September 2018 – 6 January 2019. Photograph by Angus Mill

Drawing from figurative sculpture, craft traditions and design, blended with references from literature and history, Francis Upritchard's work pushes these practices into new directions. She's known for her array of archetypal figures in varying sizes from medieval knights to meditating hippies, painted in monochromatic or distinct patterns and decorated with bespoke garments and objects

In Wetwang Slack, The Curve becomes a spectrum in which to play with scale, colour and texture that shifts as you move through the space.

Curator Leila Hasham visited Upritchard's studio to discuss anthropology, history and her experience creating for The Curve's unique space.

Leila Hasham: Your work is very much an art of excavation. You’re a kind of anthropologist and, for me, the title of the exhibition, Wetwang Slack, echoes that. Looking around your studio now I can see swathes of images of centaurs delicately painted in profile, decorating hand-blown iridescent glass vases or they’ve been up-scaled in size, holding urns above their heads that clearly make reference to the Parthenon reliefs.

Francis Upritchard: Wetwang Slack first caught my ear rather than my eye; it almost sounds rude. I had gone to Hull during 2017 because I took part in my friend Brian Griffiths’s puppet show [So He Pulled the Right Levers and You Did the Asking]. We had a spare day, so we went to the amazing local Hull & East Riding Museum, which houses a lot of British Iron Age sculpture and a hilarious old diorama depicting life at Wetwang Slack.

Wetwang was a hugely significant site for historians in determining what life was like during the Iron Age and a lot of its collection is now at the British Museum; it was pre-Christian Celtic. Wetwang is particularly important as a chariot burial site, as the wheels of chariots are placed on top of human remains and I’ve used the motif of horse shoes and chariot wheels in these new works too.

As we know, the Celtic period ended with the Roman invasion and then the Romans, with their so-called high culture, came to England and changed everything which in turn made me think of Greece. I felt that was a nice connection and again, references Greek mythology and art history.

LH: You’re clearly a lover of history. Your work traverses cultures that are often not within the same temporal zone, creating these historical mash-ups. The figurative sculptures you’ve made for The Curve have their signature brightly coloured bodies bedecked in traditional clothing from around the globe – from Japanese kimono-style jackets, to Native American shawls to medieval European hats but we’re not entirely sure what they are – they resist easy categorisation. Where do these references come from?

FU: I think it comes from growing up in New Plymouth, New Zealand in the 1970s without much TV. I was pretty excited to see the world. I was desperate to get out, and really desperate to see more. The minute I finished art school in 1997 I was away. I guess museums are the main source of inspiration, after reading. I was an avid reader from a young age, even though I’m super dyslexic I’ve always read a lot.

Actually, I probably go and visit museums more than I go and see contemporary art. What I find truly beautiful and inspiring is older work and I’m really visually interested in it. I love the form and texture of older works.

LH: How did you approach the Barbican commission? We’ve talked before about conceiving the space in sections, playing with colour, texture and scale.

FU: The Curve is an amazing space. I love that when you walk through there’s not a spot that you can stand in and see the whole show, even though it’s one room. It is a slow reveal; although it’s not exactly a narrative, you do have to go through a sort of linear progression to see the whole exhibition. Someone once told me that The Curve originally was all concrete – I wish you could take it back to that! I love architecture and I’ve always loved the Barbican so that’s another reason why this commission is particularly exciting for me.

Immediately, I wanted to work with colour. I was going to go for some crazy, very strong colours from a little Japanese colour theory book from the 1930s, but it felt too sectional as I wanted the space to feel like one big curve. I was trying to think about a rainbow but it’s not really a rainbow anymore, it’s more like a slow weakening of colour. In the first section the sculptures are much more colourful and then it slowly drains, so by the end it is only stone and rubber. Actually as the colour weakens the smell increases from the Balata sculptures in the space.

Francis Upritchard: Wetwang Slack takes place in The Curve from 27 Sep 2018–6 Jan 2019.

Admission is free.

About the artist

Francis Upritchard was born in 1976 in New Plymouth, New Zealand and lives and works in London. After studying Fine Art at Ilam School of Art, Christchurch, she moved to London in 1998 where she co-founded the Bart Wells Institute, an artist run gallery, with artist Luke Gottelier. In 2006 Upritchard won New Zealand's prestigious Walters Prize, and has had major solo exhibitions at Vienna Secession in 2009, Nottingham Contemporary in 2012, Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center in 2012, Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art in 2013, and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles in 2014. In 2009, she represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale.

Photos: © Francis Upritchard, courtesy Kate MacGarry, London