Helen Britton – The Story So Far

Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft is a series of solo exhibitions honouring eminent Australian crafts people. Helen Britton is the tenth artist to be honoured in this long running Australian Design Centre series that began in 2005. In The Story So Far, Helen Britton reflects on her early creative influences through a detailed photographic investigation of the house of her late Great Aunt and Godmother Kath Carr on the Clarence River (Ngunitiji, Yaegl Country). Kath taught Helen how to paint on porcelain, make jewellery and create collages with pressed flowers or metal filings from the lathe in the shed. Kath’s house was full of wonders – shells, gemstones, driftwood, dried seaweed, fish – and when she died it was locked and left completely intact. The exhibition features new work, jewellery, painting, installation, drawings and objects and the artist’s photographs of Kath’s house. It also acknowledges the rich and complex world of country women, of a time of creative frugality that formed Helen’s early experience of Australia, of lost possibility, and of a colonial past and present, still so deeply problematic.