FIRST THURSDAYS FEBRUARY – QUEENSTOWN’S FAVOURITE LATE NIGHT ART CRAWL

First Thursdays Queenstown is a free community event that celebrates the diversity of arts and culture in Queenstown. This Thursday 2 February join in for a fun and friendly art crawl where you choose the route and the amount of time you spent at each exhibition. 

Bringing together Starkwhite, Milford Galleries, Romer, Artbay, and Lightworx, First Thursdays seeks to connect people with creativity across our town centre. 'Based around Earl Street and Marine Parade, the evening event sees five leading art galleries offer exhibitions and talks during a special late-night opening from 5–7pm. Maps are available at the participating galleries and on the First Thursdays Queenstown instagram  – @firstthursdaysqt – and facebook pages. Make sure to take note of the talk offered this month and enjoy a glass of the region’s best thanks to Akarua Winery as you take in the art works.

February brings new exhibitions to Queenstown including sculpture by Trevor Askin at Artbay. Making work for over 40 years using the lost wax casting method, Askin’s sculptures are created in his South Island studio and foundry.  His is a free and flowing approach to abstracted sculpture which the artist terms ‘curvilinear’, describing how the bronze appears to be folded and rounded. A keen nature observer,  Askin is an amateur ornithologist and many of his bronze works capture the intricacies of our natural environment. Many will recognise Trevor’s work from Queenstown Gardens, where his large sculpture The Good Book was unveiled in November 2022 by the Lakes District Arts Trust. Head to Artbay for Trevor Askin’s artist talk at 5.30pm during First Thursdays.

For its February exhibition Starkwhite brings the work of Australian artist Jonny Niesche to Queenstown, fresh from his acclaimed appearance at the Singapore Art Fair.  Niesche reduces painting and sculpture to their most fundamental forms: colour, light and perception. His abstract compositions ooze from the centre outwards in swathes of carefully rendered pastel hues. Instead of seeing his works as painting or sculpture, the artist sees them as ‘image-objects,’ shifting between the two disciplines. Rich with seductive urban allure, Niesche’s lightboxes and paintings appear to float and pulsate, changing from fixed images to dynamic events.

Milford Galleries presents a group exhibition titled 9A that brings fresh faces alongside internationally significant artists Lisa Reihana and Yuki Kihara to Queenstown. New gallery artist Amanda Gruenwald will exhibit for the first time, her paintings ripe with rich colours seemingly poured over the canvas. Also part of the exhibition are sculptural works by ceramist Mark Mitchell. These new art works continue the artist’s restrained use of colour and line, but offer movement via twists and turns as the sculpture reaches upwards from a granite base. 

Also participating in First Thursdays Queenstown are Romer Gallery, where Stephan Romer’s large scale landscape photography is exhibited, and Lightworx, offering innovative combinations of light, colour and space.

First Thursdays Queenstown returns on Thursday 2 February. Artist Talk: Trevor Askin at 5.30pm at Artbay, Marine Parade.