Helen Britton: The Story So Far

Helen Britton is the tenth artist to be named as a Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft, an initiative of the Australian Design Centre that aims to celebrate the achievements of Australia’s most iconic crafts practitioners through a touring exhibition and a major monograph publication. Helen is a multidisciplinary Australian artist based in Munich, Germany. Her practice includes jewellery, sculpture, drawings, stencils and installations, and is informed by popular culture, threatened traditions, environmental destruction and human anxiety.

Between 2017 and 2019 Helen travelled three times to Australia to document the house of her great Aunt and Godmother Kath Carr on the Clarence river (Ngunitiji, Yaegl Country). Kath taught Helen how to make collages with pressed Australian flowers that she had collected, or with metal fillings from the lathe in the shed, to paint on porcelain which was her greatest hobby, and to make jewellery. Her house was full of wonders, shells, gemstones, driftwood, dried seaweed and fish. When she died her house was locked and left completely intact. Helen’s detailed photographic investigation was a journey back to the beginnings of her creative practice.

The touring exhibition, The Story So Far, takes as its starting point this photographic essay creating a network of connections between that time and this. The work comments on the rich and complex world of country women, of a time of creativity and frugality that formed Helen’s early experience of Australia, of lost possibility, and of a colonial past and present, still so deeply problematic. New works including painting, installation, jewellery, drawings and objects feature in the exhibition alongside the first showing of the photographic work ‘My Godmother’s House’.

A major monograph with the publishing house Arnoldsche and the awarded German Book designer Alexandra Rusitschka accompanies the exhibition and will be available from the SECCA Shop.

The Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft series of solo national touring exhibitions was initiated by Australian Design Centre in 2005. It honours eminent established artists working in the fields of contemporary craft, celebrating their mastery of skill, their achievements and the unique place they occupy in the national design culture. This series continues to have an impact on generations of artists and art lovers across Australia and internationally. The Story So Far is touring across Australia through ADC On Tour from 2025 to 2027.