Floor talk on Hook Hand Heart Star

Join us for floor talk on Hook Hand Heart Star with jeweller Warwick Freeman and co-curators Bronywn Lloyd and Kim Paton.

Developing Hook Hand Heart Star with one of the largest design museums in the world – Die Neue Sammlung in Munich – was an ambitious task for the small but mighty team at Objectspace. It started in 2022 with archivist and researcher Bronwyn Lloyd beginning the task of assembling a catalogue raisonné of Warwick Freeman’s practice, which would take more than two years to complete.

From this beginning and in close collaboration with Warwick, co-curators Kim Paton and Bronwyn Lloyd at Objectspace and Petra Hölscher at Die Neue Sammlung devised a framework, list of works and presentation fit to communicate Freeman’s singular practice and contribution to contemporary jewellery – both nationally and internationally.

As the exhibition enters its final month at Objectspace, we invite you to hear more of the story behind this retrospective direct from the collaborators who brought it to life.

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Warwick Freeman (b.1953, Nelson) began making jewellery in 1972. As a prominent member of the Auckland jewellery co-operative Fingers, he was at the forefront of a rethinking of New Zealand 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. Wunderrūmawas presented at Galerie Handwerk in Munich, and on its return to New Zealand at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Freeman has also been involved in governance and curatorial activities: in 2004 he became the inaugural Chair of Objectspace, a public gallery dedicated to the exhibition of craft, design and architecture. His works are held in public and private collections in Aotearoa and internationally including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the V&A, London, the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, LACMA, Los Angeles, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Dr Bronwyn Lloyd is a writer, curator and avid crafter based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She has a PhD in English and Art History from the University of Auckland, has written for numerous journals, exhibitions, and significant publication, and has curated for and worked with galleries across Aotearoa. Lloyd is co-curator and archivist for the exhibition Warwick Freeman: Hook Hand Heart Star, having spent one day a week across three years assembling a catalogue raisonné of Warwick Freeman’s jewellery. She contributed an essay to the accompanying monograph Warwick Freeman: Hook Hand Heart Star (arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2025), and has also recently been published in The Chair: A Story of design and making in Aotearoa (Objectspace, 2024), Modern Women: Flight of Time (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2024) and Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania (Te Papa Press, 2019). Lloyd is the recipient of a University of Auckland Doctoral Scholarship and the ​Rosemary Seymour Research and Archives Award. She is a trustee of the Blumhardt Foundation and Gallery Manager at Masterworks, a commercial gallery dedicated to contemporary craft and mahi toi.

Kim Paton has been the Director of Objectspace since 2015. Her interest is in interdisciplinary exhibition making across the fields of craft, design, architecture and contemporary art. Paton has curated and written extensively on object-based art forms, including for the Warwick Freeman monograph Hook Hand Heart Star (arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2025). She is the co-editor of the publication The Chair: A story of design and making in Aotearoa (2024), co-authored the book Contemporary Jewellery in Context (arnoldsche Art Publishers, 2017). In 2024 she was awarded the Garvey Cup by Te Kāhui Whaihanga New Zealand Institute of Architects.

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