A limited number of Warwick Freeman’s iconic White Butterfly brooches are available to purchase – an elevated exhibition merch moment for Warwick Freeman: Hook Hand Heart Star.
Warwick Freeman
White Butterfly, original 1999
Silver and paint
10 x 20mm
$200 each
Objectspace Director Kim Paton writes of the White Butterfly in the Hook Hand Heart Star monograph: "First made by Freeman in 1999, the work’s subtitle is ‘introduced European pest’. The brooch is an interpretation of the Pieris rapae butterfly species, originating from Europe and North America and found in New Zealand in the 1930s. The butterfly is the bane of any gardener’s life – it will ravage your precious vegetables. Freeman adopts the white butterfly as an emblem for Pākehā, the Māori word to describe a New Zealander of European descent. For some, the butterfly could be read as an unwanted marker – there are still European New Zealanders today who reject Pākehā as a descriptor simply for its use of te reo Māori, the Māori language. For me, wearing White Butterfly acknowledges the name given to me and my ancestors by Māori when we were the ‘other’ – foreign, exotic, and introduced. The butterfly is a disservice medal. It points pejoratively to the destruction and damage caused by Pākehā through the colonisation process that traces back to that act of naming, and still continues today. Equally though, it signals to cross-cultural relationships that bind Pākehā and Māori today and that have backdropped much of Freeman’s career.”
Artist Bio
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. Wunderrūma was 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 New Zealand 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.
