Francis Upritchard, Kate MacGarry Gallery

Lilliput has come to London: a horde of eerie-looking clay figures descends on the Kate MacGarry Gallery in Shoreditch this March. This quirky, multicolour invasion is the distinctive work of sculptor Francis Upritchard, whose rave-reviewed solo exhibition Save Yourself represented her native New Zealand at the 2009 Venice Biennale.

This is a low key show for such a prolific artist. Upritchard has been exhibiting throughout Europe for close to seventeen years, and first made a name for herself by transforming familiar forms into bizarre, quasi-sacred symbols and eerie-looking homunculi. One of her best known pieces is the 2003 work Save Yourself – a subterranean tomb containing a crude vibrating mummy – which was shown at the Saatchi Gallery in 2004 and Beck’s Futures at the ICA in 2003. She’s got reputations for both shamanistic and quintessentially hippyish work, depending on who you ask. 

Figurines have gradually become more and more prominent in Upritchard’s work, and in this show a series of handcrafted, stooping presences haunts the gallery space, sometimes nude, sometimes bedecked in harlequin colours like dejected jesters. 

They’re all handmade, and – Upritchard says – don’t begin life as rounded, meaningful concepts in her imagination, rather develop a distinct personality in the process of being made. Nonetheless, there seems to be a story behind each one: standing frozen with their eyes shut, raised arms and soliciting, skyward-facing hands, and sporting turbuns, ruffs, ponchos and sau-westers – there’s a quality about these characters that’s akin to storybook illustrations.

No surprise, then, that Upritchard frequently invites writers to draw up fictions based on her work, and has teamed up with jewellery and furniture designers to extrapolate her characters’ backstory by decking them out with possessions. It’s hard to find a contemporary artist working more innovatively in figurative sculpture. 

The Kate MacGarry Gallery is open Weds - Sat from 12:00 - 18:00