Second Nature

Artist list

Helen Britton

Helen Brittons jewellery improves nature: her broches, rings and necklaces celebrate the beauty of imaginary plants and flowers. At times the image can be recognised, sometimes only the structure or association can be detected. Her work is unpredictable and displays an enchanting exuberance. The pieces are build from a great diversity of shapes and materials; layer upon layer, colour on colour.The diversity of hues is further expanded by the use of paint. Yet the objects maintain a self-evident harmony, not unlike wild gardens which never become choatic or mared by clashing colours.

Nature’s enchanting surface hides a grim reality, in a different way this jewellery also has ambiguity. It’s free spontaneity is the result of a long, determined process and iemploys state-of-the-art technology. Helen Britton builts her pieces by means of carefully rendered computerdrawings. Furthermore she applies man-made materials in a carefree manner; even some of the gemstones in her pieces are produced in laboratories. In doing so she breaks up the traditional notion of ‘value’: she treats elements cast in resin and objects of glass and plastic with the same respect as gold, silver, rubies and sapphires.

The overpowering nature of Brittons native Australia has found an unusual antipole in the modern dynamic of the german city of Munich, her present place of residence. Even the surrounding countryside of this huge city left its mark on her work. In the new jewellery, now on show in Gallerie Louise Smit, the fierce summers of the southerrn hemisphere seem to have merged with the monochromatic world of the snowcovered Alp-mountains.


Ward Schrijver
The catalogue 'Helen Britton Second Nature' is on sale in the gallery