Debris from the Dreams of Our Parents

This article is included in the book Helen Britton: The Story So Far, arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart, 2025, pp. 155–157.

She walks along the shoreline noticing the empty shells scattered in the sand. What animals lived here and why did they leave? she wonders. One by one, she picks up the shells, arranging them into an oval circle according to their shape and colour. A beautiful necklace emerges, though the gesture is so much more. She’s given the shells purpose, made sense of their being left behind.