The Miracle of Beautiful Things

Pippin Drysdale, Vessel Private Track. Prcelain. 30 × 29 cm.

Both were born in Australia and both exhibited at Galerie Marianne Heller in Heidelberg. Although they work in different genres, Pippin Drysdale (*1943) and Helen Britton (*1966) share a common theme: remembrances of the beauty of large and small things. These two artists collaboratively present their work for the first time at this new exhibition.

Pippin Drysdale’s austere, tall, perfectly wheel-turned porcelain shapes rise from minimal bases and shimmer with intense colors. She sprays multiple layers of glazes to create a velvety matte shimmer. Lush yellow, orange and red tones are shot through with slender dark lines. Like memories transformed into revolving images, the seemingly weightless vessels suggest the warmth, the spaciousness and even the seasons of the year in the barren, sun-drenched landscapes of Australia.

Helen Britton, who ranks among the avant-garde in joaillerie d’auteur, reconciles apparent opposites. She creates imaginative silver settings for little found objects, which can be made of precious materials such as diamonds or non-precious substances such as plastic. Her settings give a surprising and sometimes bizarre new meaning to objects that she has freed from their original contexts. Her small sculptures blossom with the effervescent hues of peculiar flowers. Helen Britton thus rescues small things from oblivion and gives them a new life in unconventional jewelry.

Text Walter Lokau