On putting materials and histories together:

"Pictograms constructed in stone. They formed on my table almost by themselves; while sliding the piles around animals and insects and flowers appeared, like watching clouds or reading tea leaves.

These stones were collected over my lifetime, surplus or seconds, cut by hands that can no longer be paid to do the work, in such masses that they still lie around in piles on tidelines of human activity, specific geographic locations resulting from trade shifts and economic failure. Some shapes meticulously formed by remarkable crafts people, thin and fragile and delicate, a contradiction to the materials they are made from. Some cut long ago, in a world that no longer exists. "

Gardens of stone...

"I have started building gardens of stone, portraits of fragile little lives carefully made to last several hundred years, if not longer. Reminders of what we hold in our hands, a metaphor for our responsibility. I ask of everything: Where did you come from?  

The beautiful colours of the minerals in these rocks are not lost on me, formed in our planet millennia ago, dug and blasted from the earth to be traded, some precious, some as ship ballast.  All this activity for what? 

Materials and their tales, the trail they leave across space, time, history. And now, here I am, adding to their story. So let them be worn and treasured and traded and blessed for what they represent and for the metaphor they contain."

Helen Britton received her Master of Fine Arts from Curtin University in 1999 and her Diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 2005. She has exhibited her work internationally and received numerous awards,  including the  Herbert  Hofmann  Prize and the state prize of Bavaria for craftsmanship. Britton was recently honored as Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft. The Visions of Australia program will support research and development as Helen works with the Australian Design Center to develop an exhibition to be presented in Sydney in 2025, with a multi-state national tour to follow.

Over her thirty-year career, Britton has traveled and exhibited worldwide. Highlights include her 2013 solo exhibition at the Neues Museum, Nürnberg, a 2014 residency at Villa Bengel in Idar- Oberstein, the basis for Elena Alvarez-Lutz’s 2021 film Hunter from Elsewhere, A Journey with Helen  Britton,  and the  2017  exhibition  Interstices at  The  Lawrence  Wilson  Art  Gallery in Western Australia,  a  complete overview of  Britton’s practice.  In  2023, Britton returned to her studio in  Munich after a  three-month Artist in Residence term at  École  Nationale  Supérieure d'Art de Limoges in France.

Helen’s work can be found in these and other public collections: Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Auckland Museum, Auckland, New Zealand; CODA  Museum,  Amsterdam;  Die  Neue  Sammlung,  Munich;  The Hermitage,  St  Petersburg, Russia; Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; National Gallery   of Australia,   Canberra;   Netherlands   Stedelijk   Museum,  Amsterdam;   Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia; MAXXI Museum, Rome, Italy; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Arts and Design, NY; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Museum  of  Fine  Art,  Houston,  TX;  Queensland  Art  Gallery,  Brisbane;  Schmuckmuseum  im Reuchlinhaus,  Pforzheim; Stedelijk  Museum, Amsterdam;  Stichting  Françoise  van  den  Bosch, Amstelveen ; Turnov Jewellery Museum, Czech Republic; Victoria and Albert Museum, London.