Helen Britton is dedicated to her jewellery practice, working full time in her Munich studio with partner David Bielander and Japanese jeweller Yutaka Minegishi. To compliment her work she also draws, writes, does residencies, collaborates with designers and constructs lavish installations. Her spaces for presentation vary between dealer and public galleries, museums and non-profit organisations.

‘Villa’ Brooch’

Britton’s pieces are elaborate and technical structures, expertly crafted constructions, no two pieces being exactly the same, which tend to be created in themes alongside her drawings and installations. On questioning her at her studio recently, she stated the importance of her pieces being wearable, even though she is not opposed to her work being sometimes difficult to wear^[1]. In her Jewellery Life catalogue, 2010, she juxtaposes macro shots of her work with specific environmental images to communicate how the landscape, her surrounding environments, her homeland and past are pivotal points of inspiration.

Even though Britton’s pieces are exceptional alone it is her themed installations that enrich them. Britton stated to AJF that for the 2013 presentation of The Things I see at the Neues Museum in Nürnberg, ‘my decision to show these works on a complex landscape of covered plinths was to provide the public with an experience similar to walking around a large-scale version of one of my brooches where one could then become involved in the details.’^[2]Likewise, in her recent show Unheimlich at Galerie Spectrum, Munich, her work is an elaborate miniature railway display that she has constructed, with trains she calls ‘eels’, that transport her pieces in and out of the viewer’s vision as other pieces hang from the railways support structure. The whole presentation is accompanied by macabre tote bags, thus fully engaging the viewer with the structures and ideas inherent in her work.

Unheimlich, Window view, Galerie Spektrum 2014

 [1]Talente and NZ jewellers  visit to Helen Britton’s Workshop, Munich, 13/03/2014                                                                                     [2] http://www.artjewelryforum.org/ajf-blog/helen-britton-heterogene, accessed 15/04/14