Arts & Culture

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.

As we anticipate the return of First Thursdays Queenstown we’re asking artists five questions about their practice. This week we interview Jonny Niesche, an artist known for his lushly seductive and mesmerising surfaces.

Tucked away in Manapouri, Fiordland, Ruth Shaw has not one but three bookshops. She’s become known as the ‘bookseller at the end of the world’, and that’s also the title of her book, which details her incredible life so far.

As we anticipate the return of First Thursdays Queenstown we’re asking artists five questions about their practice. This week we interview Seung Yul Oh.

In the lead up to the First Thursdays Queenstown’s return we’re asking artists five questions about their practice. This week we talk to landscape photographer, Stephan Romer.

Frankton library’s MILK bottle project is about celebrating diversity within our community. Over a series of craft workshops (or by taking a kit home), Queenstowners are invited to create their own ‘bottle person’ or totem, representing who they are and where they’ve come from.