First Thursdays May – 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. This Thursday 4 May join in for a fun and friendly art crawl across six exhibition spaces showing a wide range of work.

May brings new exhibitions to Queenstown including 100 Pounds of Honey by Simon Clark at Milford Galleries. This series of oil paintings blends Kiwiana logos with vibrant flowers and plants, exploring the intersection of our natural environment with our cultural heritage. Make sure to catch Simon Clark’s artist talk on the night at 5.30pm.

Lightworx offer a group exhibition including works by Max Patté, Tim Christie, and Robert Jahnke. Jahnke’s sculptures often explore Maori creation narratives and prophetic imagery through contemporary sculptures that draw on light and reflection and a seemingly endless repetition of pattern.

Romer Gallery present large-scale landscape photographs by Stephan Romer. Irishman Creek Roadman’s Hut lies nestled within the vast landscape of Lake Tekapo and the Mackenzie Basin and was built nearly 100 years ago as accommodation for men working on the roads. Caught as the sun set, this image a nostalgic reminder of adventure and bygone days.

Artbay have a group exhibition featuring the work of over 50 international and local artists, including Gareth Barlow. Barlow is a Sydney-based New Zealand artist whose work expresses a deep reverence for Aotearoa’s tangata whenua. Using primarily acrylics and charcoal he seeks to evoke an ephemeral and transcended quality to the structure of his large-scale works that often focus on native birds and waka.

Starkwhite continue their current exhibition that features two new art works by Fiona Pardington alongside four of her very rare early silver gelatin photographs of native birds. Pardington’s latest still life titled Hermes Mercury, Cannelles, and Parsonage Road is in the gallery, part of her ongoing and often admired body of work in the still life genre. Also in the gallery are works by John Reynolds and Australian artist Jonny Niesche.

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, the evening 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 – 7 pm on Thursday 4 May.
Artist Talk: Simon Clark at 5.30 pm. Milford Galleries, 9a Earl Street