First Thursdays March – join 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 March join in for a fun and friendly art crawl across six exhibition spaces showing a wide range of work.

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 six art spaces offer exhibitions, talks, and opportunities to meet like-minded individuals 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 at Starkwhite and enjoy a glass of the region’s best thanks to Akarua Winery as you take in the art works.

March brings new exhibitions to Queenstown including SAFE, a full gallery exhibition at Starkwhite that explores illusions of safety both psychological and actual. Created by Canterbury artist Amanda Newall (NZ / UK) and Olav Westphalen (GER / US), the exhibition is accompanied by two weekend workshops and a short talk by both artists at 6pm on the evening of First Thursdays.

Artbay’s upstairs exhibition space is opening a new show by New Plymouth based painter Jasmine Middlebrook. Fables and the realm of the fantastic are familiar and inspirational ground for this artist whose portrayals of the animal kingdom are often set within a New Zealand landscape, echoing and amplifying the call of the wild. Architecture, still life, and portraiture are woven into Middlebrook’s narratives, as are symbols and metaphor that offer triggers for personal experiences or understandings of culture and society.

Romer Gallery are debuting a new work titled Hooker Lake into their collection of Southern landscape, one that offers a fresh approach to photographer Stephan Romer’s practice. This image shows glacial debris littering the lake, situated in the Aoraki / Mount Cook National Park, where the retreating Hooker Glacier has carved a fascinating landscape.

Milford Galleries are continuing their Studio 9A group exhibition. A rare opportunity to see the work of Maori artist Lisa Reihana in Queenstown, several stills from her celebrated moving image art work Ihi are on display. Ihi is a reimagining of the mythology of Papatuanuku and Ranginui, not only a creation story but also a narrative of mother and son, and the transfer of mana from one generation to another.

Also exhibiting as part of First Thursdays Queenstown is Lightworx, offering innovative combinations of light, colour, and space.
From 5pm: Exhibition Openings at Artbay Upstairs and Starkwhite

At 6pm: Artists’ Talk by Amanda Newall and Olav Westphalen at Starkwhite, 1–7 Earl Street