Francis Upritchard

Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1976

White tankards

  • 2014
  • wood fired stoneware
  • Purchased 2015
  • 170 x 195 x 140mm
  • 2015/038.1-2

Francis Upritchard is better known for her large figurative sculptures, but some of the first things she made were domestically scaled ceramics. As a child in New Plymouth her family knew several potters, and she and her siblings were sometimes allowed to add their own small pieces into the wood kilns during firings. In recent years, Upritchard has collaborated with a number of professional New Zealand potters, creating works that both draw on, and undermine, the traditions of functional stoneware. Here, she disrupts and reanimates the familiar, functional form of the ceramic tankard, a drinking vessel that has existed almost unchanged since medieval times.

(We do this, 12 May 2018 - 26 May 2019)

This work consists of two tankards of different sizes. One is 200 x 180 x 145 centimetres, the other is 170 x 195 x 140 centimetres

Exhibition History