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Adam Art Gallery
29 May - 25 July 2004 |
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Curatorial
Statement
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Artist's Résumé
Writer Jon Bywater has described
Francis Upritchard's shrunken head works as having 'mangy,
glue-globbed hair, sickly lacquered skin - grotesquely made
up in surgical pink and putrescent green - with sharp eyeless
slits and shrivelled pouts of skewed teeth'. Indeed, these
works are ferocious in their replication of preserved human
heads. Hyper-realistically rendered from foam, real hair pasted
onto them and false teeth inserted into their jaws, the sculptures
'all manage to be both gorily evocative and flamboyantly,
amusingly fictional.'
Upritchard's love for the grotesque has been apparent since she exhibited, in 1997, the family cat - taxidermied by the artist after her brother killed it by hitting it on the back of the head with a shovel. Her interest in taxidermy is part of a larger interest in museology and collecting. Drawing her imagery from ancient Egyptian, colonial European and Maori sources, Upritchard makes her own imaginary artefacts, from utensils to animal skulls to ancient pottery.
World history Francis Upritchard-style is a somewhat blurry affair. Treading on slippery cultural ground, Upritchard's preserved heads reference moko mökai, the sacred Maori heads of the dead which have been the focus of passionate debate. Her homemade Pakeha versions give a zestful nod to postcolonial discourse, acknowledging the history of exploitation in traditional museum practices. At the same time, however, the works exude an obvious enjoyment of the original artefacts and a hobbyist's joy in the crafting of the work itself. When asked by writer Megan Dunn to describe her work, Upritchard had this to say: 'I like the idea that some aliens came down to earth and took things away but everything got mixed up on the journey back.'
Emma Bugden
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