Here Comes Everybody
Francis Upritchard (born 1976) · 2022
In the open plaza between the two buildings stand a group of long limbed giants in dark bronze, their bodies stretched and knobbly, their faces blank and gentle, one carrying a bundle, another reaching upward as if plucking something from the air. They look as though they have wandered out of a folk tale, or out of the huge Moreton Bay fig trees that shade the park behind them, whose buttressed roots their legs resemble. Children walk between their feet; adults crane to see the faces high above.
Francis Upritchard, a New Zealand born artist working in London, makes her figures by hand in balata, a natural rubber that she warms and stretches over an armature, so that the finished surface keeps every pinch and pull of her fingers. For this commission the small rubber models were scanned, enlarged and cast in bronze, but she then reworked the surfaces at full scale so the giants keep the softness of the originals. Look at the joints and hands, where the material seems to sag and fold, and at the patina, which shifts between brown and green in the changing light of the plaza.
The title comes from a phrase in James Joyce, and the artist describes her giants as workers, collaborators and guardians, figures that ready the mind to be receptive to anything before you enter the galleries. The work was commissioned for the opening of the Sydney Modern Project in December 2022 and was among the first new commissions announced for the expansion. It is the friendliest welcome committee any museum has, and it sets the tone for the playful, open building behind it.
Did You Know? The giants were first modelled by hand in balata, a natural rubber, and the finger marks survive in the bronze.
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