Off for Lunch is a freestanding centaur sculpture originally made in balata rubber and first shown in Upritchards solo show- A Long Wait at Pasquart in Switzerland. The centaur balances on its hind legs while kneeling on one foreleg, arms extended forward, as if caught in the instant of stumbling or surging ahead—frozen mid-motion in a moment of tension and determination.
The exhibition drew partial inspiration from Susanna Clarke’s novel Piranesi, which is set in an uncanny, monumental house filled with endless sculpture halls and an ocean. Clarke’s main character, nicknamed Piranesi as an ironic gesture, accepts the name with guileless sincerity—emblematic of the book’s themes of lost and re-found innocence. The sculptures in the novel become companions and oracles for the protagonist, who reads signs and meaning into their forms. This sensibility resonated with Upritchard, who sought to make sculptures that invite wonder and childlike interpretation. The show’s tone echoed not only the fictional sculpture halls but also real-world precedents like the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, reimagined in a contemporary key.
Held in a large, modernist gallery space with grey floors and soaring ceilings, A Long Wait presented a fantastical array of Balata rubber sculptures: dinosaurs, mermaids, hybrid animal deities, and mythic humanoids. A ewe and ram stood upright—one with a neck bell, the other wearing an Egyptian-style headdress. A mermaid reclined on a lobster atop a rock. A tall man bore smaller figures on his limbs, and a four-meter dinosaur towered over the room. These creatures were displayed on raw-cut sandstone plinths, their muted but varied tones—ranging from warm browns to pale greys—giving the exhibition a strict but rich palette. The grey of the rubber, in particular, called to mind the stone statuary of Narnia’s enchanted forest- another story exploring the loss of innocence.
The centaur figure of Off for Lunch sat naturally among these works, part of a cast of beings drawn from folklore, children’s imagination, and speculative history. The sculpture seeks not to impose a singular reading but instead encourages viewers to approach with personal curiosity and intuitive interpretation—just as the character Piranesi reads significance into the sculptures he loves.
Upritchard likes to exhibit this work holding fruit—especially grapes—which gently heightens the sense of interrupted movement and lends the figure a mythological or Dionysian quality. The gesture is generous and faintly absurd, underscoring the artist’s interest in disrupting art historical solemnity and encouraging the viewer to respond with wonder or affection rather than explanation.
The work was later cast in bronze at Fonderia Artistica Guastini and exhibited at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in 2024. In this new context, it remained visually close to its rubber original, deliberately confounding expectations around material value and permanence while preserving the spirit of immediacy and imaginative play.