Queenstown Art Society’s Winter Tale
Some 90 works from Queenstown Art Society’s members will be on display at Te Atamira for the next five weeks, and they're all available for purchase.
The QAS Members' Exhibition, which opened last Thursday, 27 June, is designed to be a bit of a break from the cold winter months, offering a visual feast to help brighten the season.
Local and regional artists will share their stories through painting, drawing, sculptures and photography. QAS hope to inspire and will also be offering workshops and events to connect the community creatively in warm spaces.
Tracy Porteous, chair of QAS, has been working hard to bring the exhibition to life for another year.
“We’ve got 60 artists involved here from the local area, sometimes a bit beyond that, and we’ve got 90 artworks up on the wall here at Te Atamira,” she says. “It’s a really amazing, vibrant, interesting space for people to come and have a look at the local talent here.”
The society allows each member to enter up to two works, as part of their core values system of being approachable and to embrace the creative community. There is one prize this year called the Warmest Tale Prize, which is given out based on a QAS criteria and decided by the committee.
Queenstown has many art and photography studios, but it’s not always easy for an artist to get their work shown to the public. So QAS’ volunteer committee book in this event a couple of years in advance with Te Atamira, to ensure the members' exhibition gets to go ahead regularly – there were two in 2022 and 2023, with this event the first of 2024.
“We really want the public to come and view this amazing art from around the region. The art ranges in price and it’s got a really huge scope in terms of affordability of art and the kind of content – it’s everything from landscapes, dreamscapes, abstracts and contemporary conceptual work as well.”
Signing up for membership for QAS can be done on their website. It helps to fund their community programmes, promote and support up-and-coming artists, and their mission to grow community arts here in Queenstown. There’s currently two membership tiers – both offer the benefit of connecting with the arts in the region, access to the showcase, a newsletter as well as discounts at supporting businesses.
“We have these members' exhibitions and then we also have members' nights every couple of months, just to try and build a sense of community and because a lot of our local artists work by themselves in their studios. It’s nice to feel a bigger connection somehow. We’ve also got what we call Laneway Showcase, which is a permanent exhibition within Te Atamira and that’s another option for people who are members of the society.”
The committee pull this together because they are “passionate about providing this safe place for everybody to feel they can come together and show their art, because showing art can be quite a vulnerable thing.” In the future they hope to introduce digital artforms, as they’re currently working on a more traditional model of pictures on the wall and sculptures. The team have been working hard to get the exhibition set up and are excited to finally welcome the public to come and check it all out.
“It feels like a creative bomb has just gone off in Te Atamria and all this beautiful creativity has been spread up the walls. It’s a really uplifting thing, and it’s that whole thing about what art does for the wellness of people in general – it’s expression and it has to come out of the artist. It’s such a unique expression of humanity to be creative and put your imagination out there,” Porteous says.
Winter Tale will run at Te Atamira until Friday, 2 August, from 9am-5pm daily, with artworks available to purchase. You can find out more about the exhibition at queenstownartsociety.co.nz otherwise just pop by Te Atamira to see the exhibition.
