Warwick Freeman is one of 14 artists, makers and designers exhibiting in How to make a home, a show exploring the small universe of home and the material politics of the objects and adornment we live with over time. We asked Vita four quick questions about their work in the exhibition and what makes a home, read his responses below.

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Objectspace: Can you briefly describe the material and making of your works in How to make a home?

Warwick Freeman: Hold it!

OS: Can you share some of your thinking behind the works?

WF: The Coil Bowl resembles a coiled-up piece of number eight wire you might find hanging on a nail in a farm shed. It’s also a scaled up version of a bracelet I make. The bookends are found chunks of limestone and argillite, the faces were already there. I remember when I first came across the Lava Handles – I spotted them when I was walking across a lava flow in Devonport at low tide one day – as I picked them up I saw how easily many of them sat in the the grip of my hand.

OS: How do you feel your work connects to domestic spaces and/or the way we adorn and dress them?

WF: These objects are all functional in the home, but there was no great need for another handle, bookend or bowl, just like there’s no need for another chair but we keep adding to that pile and it’s the pile that gives us our history of ourselves and how we lived.

OS: How to make a home posits that what makes a home is the persistence of ‘things’ that inspire us to feel like we belong. Can you tell us about an object that has made, or does make, your home a home?

WF: We just built a house and during the design phase a persistent question was  – “Where is Humphrey going to go?” – ‘Humphrey’ is one of Humphrey Ikin’s saw horse style tables made to bench height. We had it made by Humphrey Ikin in the 1990s for a space at the end of the kitchen bench in our previous home. Situated as it was, at the end of the hallway, it was the obvious spot to put things on when you entered the kitchen.

The usual response to the question, “Where is ......?’ was, ‘Have you looked on Humphrey?’

In the new house Humphrey is not in such a handy place to unload stuff onto, sidelined to more of a show pony position, its top is now what we have come to term ‘curated’ – the strategic placement of bowls and object. A different role but Humphrey’s presence in our lives is still persistant.

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More about Warwick Freeman

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 New Zealand contemporary jewellery practice that began in the 1980s. 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. 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.