First Thursdays June – Join Queenstown’s favourite late night art crawl

By Kelly Carmichael

First Thursdays Queenstown is a free community event that celebrates the diversity of arts and culture in Queenstown. Kick off a weekend of creative exploration on Thursday 1 June with a fun and friendly art crawl across six exhibition spaces. This month get your art fix on Thursday evening before you roll into Luma the following day.

June brings new exhibitions to Queenstown including Darren George at Milford Galleries. George is a New Zealand artist of Ngāpuhi descent whose work reflects the dichotomy of his cultural roots — a Christian faith with Māori heritage. This fertile ground produces paintings with a bright palette dominated by birds and waterfalls. Make sure to catch Darren George’s artist talk on the night at 5.30pm.

Lightworx offer a group exhibition including works by Max Patté, Robert Jahnke, and collaborators Nagy Molnár. These two Hungarian artists blend elements of glass and optical light-art with cutting-edge digital techniques, creating compositions that invite viewers on a journey through the interplay of light, movement, and reflection.

Starkwhite are exhibiting an international group show of gallery artists including Billy Apple, Fiona Pardington, Gerold Miller, Jonny Niesche, and Ani O’Neill amongst others. On display will be a newly released work from Pardington’s ongoing and highly acclaimed huia series.

Romer Gallery present large-scale landscape photographs by Stephan Romer, including a new image of Aoraki Mount Cook. Challenged by a client to capture the rugged peaks at night the photographer obliged, and a striking image of the maunga and a night sky full of stars resulted.

Artbay have a group exhibition featuring the work of over 50 international and local artists, including Sam Foley. Foley describes his work as taking the urban landscape as a subject, specifically the man-made and its encroachment into an environment. ”….the nature of chaos vs conformity, the myriad variations between absolute light and terminal dark are my constant fascinations” he comments.

Bringing together Starkwhite, Milford Galleries, Romer, Artbay, and Lightworx, First Thursdays Queenstown seeks to connect people with creativity across our town centre. Based around Earl Street and Marine Parade, First Thursdays sees six art spaces offer exhibitions, talks, and opportunities to engage with the region’s creative community during a special late-night opening from 5–7pm. Thanks to the generosity of Akarua, join us for a glass of some of this region’s finest wine as you look at the art work. Maps are available at participating galleries and on the First Thursdays Queenstown instagram – @firstthursdaysqt – and facebook page.

First Thursdays Queenstown from 5–7pm on Thursday 1 June.
Artist Talk: Darren George at 5.30 pm, Milford Galleries, 9a Earl Street.