Helen Britton 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.
The Australian Design Centre honoured Helen as a Living Treasure in 2025.
Guests
Julie Ewington is a writer and a curator and sometimes a broadcaster living on Gadigal land in Sydney.
Show highlights and takeaways
Childhood in Newcastle [00:05]
Growing up in working-class Newcastle exposed Helen to industrial processes that became foundational to her art. "We were taken as tiny children to the BHP and we watched them pour tonnes of molten steel... Watching this steel for making ships being poured... It was fairly impressive." These early experiences with molten materials and manufacturing processes sparked her lifelong fascination with material transformation.
Creative making was everyday life [5:00]
Helen's mother encouraged constant making. "You'd spend your weekend, doing stuff making things, gluing things together, sewing things, not necessarily always practical things." Her grandfather was a blacksmith who even shod horses for the Australian Olympic team, embedding craft traditions deeply in family life.
Making material connections[6:00]
Helen was drawn to understanding material processes from start to finish. "Thinking about the connection between the grass and the cow, and the milk and the butter and the ice cream that was made. This was really important to me as a child. I loved making those connections in my mind."
Helen's Godmother's house [7:00]
At her godmother Kath Carr's house on Yaegl Country near Yamba, Helen painted porcelain, pressed flowers, and made jewelry with polished stones. "There was never any hierarchy of what you did, it flowed from one activity to the other. And I think that was incredibly formative for me as an artist."
Comprehensive art education foundation [10:00]
Helen completed 12 years of university education across Newcastle, Sydney, and Perth. At Edith Cowan University, she did "13 hours a week for three years" of life drawing, plus printmaking, textiles, painting, photography, and cultural studies - building a thorough technical foundation.
Julie Ewington's discovery moment [11:00]
Curator Julie Ewington describes receiving Helen's master's degree work: "A beautiful wooden little box... with 15 or 20 objects each in their own little compartment... mostly broaches... unexpected combinations of things like pearls and plastic, silver and tin. She's no respecter of conventional value."
Research drives material choices [14:00]
Helen's material selection comes from deep historical research. "I get fascinated by certain, often objects or practices or geographical locations and their histories. And so I will then go and find out about them. I'll research them."
Glass birds led to Thuringia discovery [14:20]
A chance encounter at a Munich Christmas market with glass ornaments led to exploring the 500-year history of glassmaking in Thuringia's forests. Glass makers settled there in 1497 after being "driven from through one of the many wars out of Bohemia" because the region had "forests, sand and water" - everything needed for glassmaking.
Long-term process [17:00]
Helen's research and creative process happens over many years. Describing her work in Thuringia, "I started in 2001, researching there... And I couldn't make work about that experience until 2007. And then subsequent exhibitions around the glass animals happened in 2009, 2018, 2020 2021."
Materials carry their own stories [18:00]
For her Thuringia work, Helen chose "glass, rusted metal and cement" because these materials could tell the history: "the long history of glass making in that region; the dilapidated factories that were scattered through the forests; and the Soviet occupation, which left behind a plethora of cement structures."
Humble, human stories [19:00]
Helen is drawn to stories of working people rather than "big epic stories" from museums.
"Often more humble stories or stories that are from working people... often of ephemera or ephemeral practices that are poorly documented but incredibly human."
Managing an overactive imagination [25:00]
Helen describes her creative challenge: "My job is to try and sort a kind of completely overactive, constant barrage of imagination and ideas that are in my head at all times... it's actually quite stressful." She creates parameters and structures to manage this creative intensity.
Parameters as structure [26:00]
Helen uses journals and creates specific parameters: "It has to be related to specificity, whether it's geographical, historical material, often a combination of those three things in one place" - like "the forests of Thuringia; the beaches of Australia; Limoges where I recently did a major new porcelain project."
Advice for artists [28:30]
Helen's core advice is: "Just be really courageous. Stay off your phone and don't care what other people say. Have a good plan B, that's also really important." She emphasizes the financial reality: "It is incredibly difficult to live from one's work... it is really tough... not to be afraid of having a job to keep you financially stable."
International impact of Living Treasure recognition [29:30]
The Living Treasure award has significant global resonance. "People are really impressed by the idea that there is an Australian Living Treasure series... it has a huge international resonance" with colleagues from different countries reaching out to learn about the program.
About Living Treasures
Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft is an initiative of the Australian Design Centre. The series aims to celebrate the achievements of Australia’s most iconic crafts practitioners, through a touring exhibition and a major monograph publication.
Read about Living Treasures on the Australian Design Centre website.
