Warwick Freeman’s emblematic jewellery pursues meaning. Across five decades the Aotearoa New Zealand jeweller has built a lexicon of signs: from the cultural symbolism of the hook and the star to the heart redrawn in the volcanic scoria of Rangitoto island. When worn, his jewellery communicates something of who we are and how we have lived. Throughout his career Freeman has never tired of exploring what it means to make jewellery in Aotearoa.

Freeman’s work reflects a depth of thinking about the construction of identity that weaves together the big with the small. He has explored forms found in the detritus of daily life, the influence of Aotearoa’s colonisation and the rich geology of the land, all of which have provided him with an abundant supply of materials and narratives to draw from.

Hook Hand Heart Star includes key installation works, emblematic groupings and a number of suites of emblems, described by Freeman as ‘sentences’. Composed of arrangements of individual works, these groupings evidence Freeman’s practice as always in motion, building on itself iteratively over many years.

The Aotearoa tour of Hook Hand Heart Star includes the addition of a materials library drawn from Freeman’s studio, accumulated over 40 years of jewellery practice and transplanted into the gallery alongside some of his domestic objects.

This survey exhibition brings together works from public and private collections throughout Europe, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, along with works from Freeman’s own archive.