Arts & Culture

Over the hill in Wanaka the annual Craigs Aspiring Art Prize will take place this weekend. The annual event attracts artists from throughout New Zealand and offers a top prize of $20,000. It’s the main fundraiser for Holy Family Catholic School.

This January Te Atamira is hosting Squiggla, a series of workshops that are a gymnasium for creative thinking. Aimed at adults, the programme encourages creative thinking through free-flow mark-making. It’s all about visual exploration and creative discovery without the pressure of copying anything or ‘making art’.

Contemporary art gallery, Broker, is showcasing a group exhibition, The Insiders, from now and through to the start of 2023. It will feature six artists from Australia and New Zealand and spans across photography, video, painting and drawing. It examines each of the artist’s contemplation of the internalisation of emotional and phycological states within the external, physical spaces of our existence.

The Arrowtown Creative Arts Society is launching the first “Art Before Dark” Arrowtown open gallery event on 14 December from 5:30pm to 7pm. With a similar format to the popular First Thursday events in Queenstown, this will be a family-friendly opportunity for art enthusiasts to visit seven galleries in Arrowtown, all within a short walking distance of each other.

Curious is a new programme of talks and events in Queenstown instigated by Kelly Carmichael. Kelly is the director of Starkwhite in Earl Street and has built up a solid curatorial background working in the contemporary art world across Europe, the Middle East and the US before returning home to Aotearoa–New Zealand. She’s launching the first Curious event on 3 December at Starkwhite Queenstown.

The Central Otago Regional Choir will perform Magical Music from Mozart to Madden in Arrowtown, Wanaka and Alexandra at the start of December. The performance will showcase the choir performing a variety of music including several songs by the highly-regarded New Zealand composer Richard Madden QSM, who will also be conducting them.

International award-winning British photographer Mandy Barker will bring her SHELF-LIFE exhibition to Te Atamira over December and January. The exhibition will highlight the impact of the global reliance on plastic and the damage it causes to marine life, and has been brought here in partnership with the British Council and the British High Commission.

Queenstown Airport is doubling as an art gallery for the next few months. Natalya Doudell’s artwork titled ‘Unitiy’, will hang in the baggage claim area and is currently for sale through Wanaka Fine Art Gallery. If it’s sold while on display in the airport, a portion of the price will be donated to a local charity.

Hana Pera Aoake (Ngaati Hinerangi me Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Mahuta, Tainui/Waikato, Ngaati Waewae, Ngaati Wairangi, Waitaha, Kaati Mamoe) is an artist, writer, and researcher. Their practice that explores overlaps and tensions between Indigenous and European knowledge systems, threading both together to weave new meanings and ways of sharing. Hana works across a variety of media including textiles, raranga (weaving), ceramics, painting, performance, film, and sculpture.

Abbas Nazari, a former Afghan refugee who fled the Taliban in 2001, will do a small tour of Queenstown and Wanaka in early November to tell his story and talk about his book, After the Tampa. The book is an autobiographical memoir about Abbas’ family’s journey from Afghanistan to New Zealand and was written during the 2020 lockdown.

Wesley John Fourie is an emerging artist whose work explores the sensual and the tactile. Their questioning of sexuality, nature, love, and loss, often manifests as large-scale soft sculptures. Textiles have long been a vehicle for storytelling but have recently had something of a renaissance in contemporary art. These thread-based ways of making offer powerful political and emotional associations, in Fourie’s practice they also offer direct relation to land forms through scale and to their creator through an intensity of making.

Nestled away in Lake Hayes Estate is a wee crafters oasis – The Clay Station. Co-founders Debbie Townsend and Kylie Burnell converted Debbie’s garage into a studio after she wasn’t able to attend her pottery club as Covid shut it down. Today, they also offer fun clay making classes in various bars and restaurants around town for anyone to get creative and learn the art of pottery.

Rather than looking back to traditional forms of jewellery or to the often very similar offerings of standard jewellery shops, contemporary jewellery offers something else. Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s, contemporary jewellery explores the nature of jewellery and often grapples with conceptual ideas. You can find it in the studio, on the body, and in galleries and museums. This is a self-conscious adornment, something that often challenges established mainstream ideas while remaining a carefully crafted, beautiful, and valuable treasure made to be worn.

Throughout history, art has both influenced and been influenced by technology. In fact, the relentless push to achieve something new that drives both art and science makes them natural collaborators. Kereama Taepa is an innovator, an artist employing digital technologies to create works and experiences that shift between digital, physical, virtual, and augmented realities. His practice is fuelled by popular culture and explores the infinite possibilities of technologies and how they may be employed to transmit mātauranga Māori.

There’s nothing like the comfort that comes from turning the pages of a good book and the team at Frankton Library is working to ensure that’s something that’s readily available to all migrant communities in every language spoken locally.

If there’s one thing Kiwis know, it’s that we have a beautiful backyard, especially our stunning mountains. The team at Close to Home are taking it upon themselves to showcase the terrain that is off the beaten track and how you can explore it in a sustainable way, through a series of splitboard and ski films. The major project of the series will be filmed this month and is about exploring the Remarkables and going to Lake Hope. They expect to launch it to Queenstown in January of 2023, before entering it in film festivals here and throughout the world.

Contemporary printmaking is flourishing and the traditional intimacy of these often small scale art works is finding a new audience. Kyla Cresswell’s work is delicate, but explores heavy issues including the physical impact of the elements on our environment and the consequences of human occupation. She recently returned to her home province of Murihiku/ Southland and now lives in Dunedin.

Cold Snap Club produces a variety of painted canvases with ski scenes inspired by the terrain around Wanaka. Hannah Marshall, the woman behind the moniker, has swapped out her ski poles for paint brushes and creates pieces with winter-lovers in mind. Each canvas depicts skiers, or party shredders, in bright clothing on Cardrona, Treble Cone, or other ski fields.

Head to Queenstown Market any Saturday and you’ll find Jessica Simpson from So Sloe, a locally made clothing brand. Simpson is going against the fast fashion movement and providing one-of-a-kind garments.

Creative Queenstown Arts & Crafts Market in Earnslaw Park is having a refresh after more than 35 years in operation – there’s a new market manager on board, Brigit Van der Kaag, and it will now be going by simply, Queenstown Market.