Helen Britton is a multidisciplinary Australian artist based in Munich, Germany. Her practice creates jewellery and objects, drawings, stencils and installations, and is informed by popular culture and folk art, disappearing traditions on the backdrop of a strong underlying influence of her natural Australian environment. Helen completed a Master of Fine Arts by research at Curtin University, Western Australia in 1999, which included guest studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, and San Diego State University, California. In 1999 she returned to Munich to complete postgraduate study at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 2002 she established her Studio in Munich with David Bielander and Yutaca Minegishi. In March of 2011 Helen Drutt-English launched a new catalogue of Helen Britton’s work in Munich. In 2013 at the invitation of The Neue Sammlung, Munich, an overview of 20 years of Helen’s work was shown as a solo exhibition in the Neues Museum, Nürnberg, Germany. In 2013 Britton was awarded the Förder Preis of the city of Munich, and in 2014 was artist in residence at Villa Bengel in Idar-Oberstein. In 2017 Helen created the exhibition Intersticies at The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, UWA, Western Australia – a complete overview of her practice in conjunction with Perth Festival, including her large scale drawing works, Ghost Train installation and a selection of small sculpture and objects. In 2019 Helen Britton was made adjunct Professor of RMIT University in Melbourne. In 2020 Helen was invited by the Bavarian Chamber of Crafts to curate Schmuck for the International handwerksmesse. In 2021 Elena Alvarez-Lutz released her documentary film Hunter from Elsewhere, A Journey with Helen Britton at Dok.Fest Munich.
What does Hatched mean to you?
I once wrote an article about professional practice and compared young artists to baby turtles. Having dodged the dangers of the scramble across the sand into the vast and mysterious ocean of artistic practice, I still feel tinges of both the terror and excitement of those first moments after hatching from the academic egg. What is it that we want to do with our work? Change the world? Make things better? Simply find a way of communicating that which is impossible to formulate in words? Maybe all of this, and each time the answer appears shimmering between the weed, a wave comes and washes it further from sight. 30 years on I’m still swimming.
