Cheeky white girl follows 'wrong' angle

By FEDERICO MONSALVE

In her early years as an artist Francis Upritchard moved from counting scabs on potatoes to mummifying the family cat. As the legend goes, her brother rushed the feline to her studio a few hours after it had died where she mummified it in what she calls "a wrong and kind of ugly way".

And the morbid eccentricity didn't stop there. It is safe to say the London-based New Zealander is not seeking to portray the pretty or the divine.

Rather, her work is a mixture of ancient artefacts, a pasting of historic symbols as she sees fit.

"I like to think of my work as placing artefacts in a teletransporter machine and having them come out at the other end looking completely wrong." That they do.

She now makes mock mummified Pakeha heads in a Maori tradition.

"Making a white guy with bad teeth just seemed funny," she says.

She made a tiki with extra fingers and other Maori artefacts out of plastic or covered in a highly poisonous substance.

Her preoccupations go beyond the colonial legacy and into a morbid, empty husk of biculturalism that sees traditional artefacts turned into cheap plastic souvenirs or amorphous imitations.

"[With the Maori pieces] I am not just copying stuff - it's a bit about misinterpretation and not the Maori reality. To me some of these objects are about spirituality, but an empty spiritualism," Upritchard says, pointing to a set of delicate pins with Maori heads placed in a blue velvet case.

Emptiness, it seems, is a recurring theme. In addition to her Maori-influenced pieces, Upritchard has brought to her Auckland show at the Ivan Anthony Gallery a series of empty Egyptian Canopic jars.

"The bases of the jars are actually bought in cheap stores for about $2 or $3 each, but I made the lids."

The final pieces look incredibly original, like museum artefacts, but at closer look they are cheap imitations, a K-Mart gothic, if one may say so.

What does Upritchard do in her other life?

"I am co-director of the Bart Wells Institute in London," the gallery that novelist Hari Kunzru described in the Observer as his favourite place and added "it's a bit like the Tate but with less toilets".

The gallery, a project she is intending to leave slowly behind to focus more on her work, has a history of putting together colossal, irreverent shows (i.e. Viva Pablo, a group show looking at what Pablo Picasso has been doing since his death).

Most recently, this prolific artist, who has been known to have up to four exhibitions at any given time, has been selected by the Institute of Contemporary Art as a finalist in this year's Beck's Futures Award. The award, considered to be the largest of its kind in Britain with a top prize of £65,000 ($191,000) , was presented last year by the experimental pop diva Bjork.

"The award is sort of an alternative to the Turner Prize," says Upritchard.

One gets the feeling she has got this far via a combination of charm and playfulness. "You have to have fun while you are making art, it's not about going to the studio to flagellate yourself, but about finding fun ways to engage the audience."

When asked about her "purpose" Upritchard seems adamant there isn't one, and has at points admitted she doesn't know what she is doing.

"Sometimes I don't get what it is I was trying to do until two years later, and I say, so that is where that comes from.

"Artwork is about having fun, challenging, conversing with people."

The result are pieces that seem to lurk underwater leaving the audience no choice but to squint and try to make out exactly what is in there, what on earth it might be saying, and why it looks so incredibly wrong from this perspective.

In a way, Upritchard's work accomplishes a shock factor that she, personally, seems to want to avoid.

"People sometimes say, 'Oh my God, cheeky white girl, I can't believe she is doing that', but there is nothing controversial about my work, that is not what I am after."

Judging by the reactions of several critics, perhaps we should ask her again in two years.

* Francis Upritchard's work can be seen at the Ivan Anthony Gallery in K Rd until February 22. The Beck's Futures winner will be announced in late April.