Francis’ Upritchard’s sculpture 'Swamp Creature' is a hybrid, amorphous creature standing four metres high. Upritchard’s sculpture has often drawn on antiquity, as with her Barbican Centre exhibition of centaurs and humans inspired by the Parthenon Reliefs. Mixing classical references with prehistory, myth and futurism, 'Swamp Creature' draws on dinosaurs, mythic beings and sea and land creatures, creating a sense of the uncanny, of folkloric creatures and unknown forms lurking beneath the surface. Despite classical imagery, Upritchard's creatures bear the marks of human frailty with their anthropomorphic limbs, slight gestures and dystopian textures.

'Swamp Creature' was first exhibited in the Salle Poma during Upritchard’s first solo exhibition, 'A Loose Hold', in Switzerland at Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel, 2022. The artist wanted the upper gallery, the Salle Poma, to feel ‘like a formal sculpture hall, with works ranging widely in size and meaning - the seriousness underlined by heavy rock plinths and the almost geometric layout’. Aware of the tyranny that comes with scale, Upritchard forms an intimacy in the viewer's relationship to the sculpture, encouraged by its intense details and textures.

'Swamp Creature' is made of balata, a natural, sustainable material which creates little waste and must be manipulated into shape using heat and rapidity whilst submerged in water. Upritchard is drawn to its ‘very natural look’ and draws parallels to the appearance of driftwood or an ancient preserved body.

Upritchard acknowledges the influence of Susanna Clarke’s 2022 novel Piranesi on 'Swamp Creature', which describes a house that represents a parallel dimension containing gigantic statues in an inexhaustible number of hallways and atriums, gradually causing memory loss in the characters in this world. She draws visual cues between the imagined realm of the story and her experience of monumental sculptures as a viewer. Upritchard references Clarke’s fictional house in the perception of the characters in 'A Loose Hold', which are open to interpretation and cultural readings.

Part of a new body of work, 'Swamp Creature' has been created simultaneously with her first large public commission, 'Here Comes Everybody' for the Sydney Modern Project at the Art Gallery New South Wales, which opened in December 2022. This installation consists of three fantastical figures cast in bronze, inhabiting the entrance court and greeting visitors to the new Welcome Plaza. Each 6.5 metres tall, they have been inspired by mythology, folklore and the surrounding Moreton Bay fig trees.