The final First Thursdays Quarterly is Thursday 7 November

For almost three years, First Thursdays Quarterly has been connecting our community to creativity across six exhibition spaces in Queenstown’s town centre. The event has helped a strong cultural precinct emerge around Earl Street and Marine Parade and hosted numerous exhibition openings, artist talks, and opportunities for the creative community to connect. November’s event on Thursday the 7th will be our last. The galleries involved – Starkwhite, Milford, Romer, Artbay, Lightworx, and Virut – are proud to have included and grown diverse art lovers and look forward to seeing what else the growing cultural precinct can imagine.

This November Spring Sampler at Starkwhite brings together a group of contemporary artists that fill the gallery with sensory experience and colour. Exacting minimalist paintings by Seung Yul Oh are met by Ani O’Neill’s Baby ‘Eke, dozens of crocheted baby octopi that flee across the gallery wall. A work from John Reynolds’ Missing Hours series is fluid and painterly, while his ongoing Acronyms, etc… tiles bridge the verbal and the visual, capturing the zeitgeist of shifting language. Jonny Niesche presents his latest seduction in a series of paintings with chromatic fields and prismatic structures that riff on mid-century minimalism and formalism.

At Milford Galleries, ceramics master and Arts Laureate John Parker’s new exhibition Ceramics of Unease fills the space and pushes the boundaries of clay. Parker will be giving an artist talk at 6pm on the night and says of his methods: “I make ware which is easily recognisable as the classical pottery vessel, bottle or bowl, but my special concern is to push the concepts of these as far as possible into severe minimalism and into the functional/non-functional debate to explore the very essence of defining these ideas.”

Virut Gallery is a solo space for a Thai artist known for his large-scale and intricately expressive collage works. Virut blends and layers thousands of tiny scraps of colourful paper fashion and adult magazines from which appear large, bold portraits. Head up the stairs next door on Church Street to Lightworx to see a revolving display of work by contemporary New Zealand and international light artists. Artbay have a group exhibition in their Front Room space, including work by artists Issac Petersen, Rachael Errington, and Michael Moore.

Romer Gallery present large format landscapes of Te Waipounamu by photographer Stephan Romer. Castle Hill, nestled in the Kura Tawhiti Conservation Area, captures the limestone formations of Arthur’s Pass, the photographer seeking out the soft morning light that illuminates ancient rock. Rangitata offers a panoramic view of the braided Rangitata River on the Canterbury Plains. Stephan has stitched six images together to reveal a fleeting moment of sunlight piercing through the clouds, highlighting the lush green foreground and creating a breathtaking contrast with the Two Thumbs Range in the distance.

First Thursdays Quarterly thanks everyone who has helped make the event a success and acknowledges the funding or in-kind support from Akarua, Lakes District Arts Trust, Central Lakes Trust, and Community Trust South.

First Thursdays Quarterly from 5–7.30pm on Thursday, 7 November
Artist talk by John Parker at Milford Galleries on Earl Street at 6pm.