Coffee & Croissants on rocks

Join us for a closing weekend Coffee & Croissants kōrero to farewell Warwick Freeman’s retrospective Hook Hand Heart Star with a focus on the Materials Library – an accumulation of materials collected over 40 years of jewellery practice that appears alongside Freeman’s jewellery in the exhibition.

The conversation centers on rocks – a material of singular importance to both the topology of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and jewellery making.

Gathered around a long table at Objectspace, our speakers – all rock enthusiasts and knowledge holders – will bring along their own rock collections to share, handle and discuss, reflecting on the ways materials carry meaning, memory and place.

The discussion will be led by Finn McCahon-Jones, with Warwick Freeman in conversation alongside Geoff Chapple.

Get your $10 ticket to attend this morning talk with a coffee & croissant in hand.

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Finn McCahon-Jones is a part-time rock collector and full-time materials enthusiast. He currently works as Manager Collections, Documentary Heritage at Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira. He has held the roles of Curator/Director at Te Toi Uku Crown Lynn & Clayworks Museum in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and Associate Curator Applied Art & Design and Exhibition Curator at Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira. In 2020 he was the Auckland Library Heritage Trust scholar where he focused on the history of the red-stone chip found on the footpaths in Auckland. McCahon-Jones trained in the visual arts, attending Auckland University of Technology, majoring in sculpture. He practices under the name Finn Ferrier.

Geoff Chapple is a journalist, playwright, author, and founder of Te Araroa, the New Zealand-long tramping trail. His book Terrain: Travels through a deep landscape (Random House NZ 2015) takes various geologists into the back country to walk and talk amidst the evidences of Aotearoa’s own complex geology, then on through city streets with artisans who work with rock, recording how we have used rock socially. An essay by Chapple, originally commissioned to accompany Warwick Freeman's installation In Praise of Volcanoes at Objectspace in 2018 is included in the monograph that accompanies Freeman's retrospective Hook Hand Heart Star (arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2025).

Warwick Freeman began making jewellery in 1972. As a prominent member of Auckland jewellery co-operative, Fingers, he was at the forefront of a rethinking of Aotearoa contemporary jewellery practice that began in the 1980s. He has exhibited internationally since that time. In 2002 he was made a Laureate by the Francoise van den Bosch Foundation based at the Stedelijk Museum. In the same year Freeman received a laureate award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. In 2014, Freeman co-curated the exhibition Wunderrūma, with jeweller, Karl Fritsch. Wunderrūma was presented at Galerie Handwerk in Munich, and on its return to New Zealand at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. In 2025 he was honoured by the Designers Institute of New Zealand with a John Britten Black Pin. Freeman has also been involved in governance and curatorial activities, and his works are held in public and private collections in Aotearoa and internationally.

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Coffee & Croissants is a conversation series supported by our friends at Allpress Espresso and Daily Bread.

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