Helen Britton 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 workshop in Munich with David Bielander and Yutaca Minegishi. Her work is held in the National Gallery of Australia, The Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, The Schmuck Museum Pforzheim, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Metropolitan Museum, New York, The Hermitage, St Petersburg, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London among others. In 2005 Helen was awarded the Herbert Hofmann prize for excellence in contemporary jewellery and in 2006 the state prize of Bavaria for craftsmanship. 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 Förderpreis of the city of Munich, and in 2014 was artist in residence at Villa Bengel in Idar-Oberstein. In 2015 Helen Britton was invited by Ingo Maurer to make a solo exhibition of her “Industrial” series of jewellery and drawings in his showrooms in Munich, and was Artist in Residence at the invitation of Janet Homes a Court at Vasse Felix in Western Australia. In 2017 Helen has been invited by The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, UWA, Western Australia to make a complete overview of her practice in conjunction with the Festival of Perth.


Helen on her Feeling Lucky exhibition works:
What have we got here in this work? Violence, love, riches, sentimentally, humour, wisdom; a friendly companion, a lucky charm, an amulet. Hope. The small and the large refrain. Themes of popular culture, the essence of a pop song in solid form. While the figures themselves draw their shapes from the cheapest trinket, the sentiment that they convey reaches into the deepest abyss. I see in these works all the effort, humour, joy and failure of our existence. They are rough signifiers, visually reduced and emotionally condensed. They are also private icons, some accompanying me from my earliest memories, others invested with my own associations, sifted out of the chaos of possibility through fitting into my hunting pattern. We all live in hope and want luck, more than ever at this point in history.


Public collections:
The Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Stichting Françoise van den Bosch, Amstelveen; The Netherlands Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Auckland Museum, Auckland, New Zealand; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Die Neue Sammlung, Staatliches Museum für angewandte Kunst, Munich (Dauerleihgabe der Danner- Stiftung); The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia; Schmuckmuseum im Reuchlinhaus, Pforzheim; The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia; National Gallery of Victoria, Australia; CODA Museum Amsterdam; Museum of fine Art, Boston, USA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, USA, The Hermitage, St Petersburg, Russia, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Jeweller Museum, Czech Republic.