Queenstown Gallery of Fine Art in Queenstown

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comments 2

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  Rachel Hopkins

  :: 11 January 2018 06:39:00

  To the prior reviewer, the reason you could not find any information on the artist is quite possibly because she does not exist! I visited this gallery last month and spotted an oil on canvas of the Fiordlands that looked peculiarly similar to a Peter Latham art photograph that I own in print form. I tried taking a photo of the artwork but the gallery owner pounced on me like a lion. She was also dismissive when asked about the background of the artist. I suspect that like many galleries of this calibre, low cost replica paintings are brought in from countries like Vietnam or China and sold as local artworks. It's a horrible practice which undermines local artists in the interests of profit.

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  Tristan J.

  :: 18 July 2016 04:27:32

  What a nightmare - avoid the Queenstown Gallery of Fine Art at all costs. I purchased an oil on canvas landscape by a local artist, a 'June Wood', in mid-September 2015 for $1637.17, which included a $158.90 postage and insurance fee for the painting to be shipped to my Sydney address. It arrived in bubble wrap and a cardboard box and I was horrified to find that the bubble wrap had imprinted itself onto the artwork. I immediately sent high resolution images taken with a DSLR to the gallery owner, Christine Jones, but she claimed the photos were not clear enough and that I would have to mail the painting back to her. In order to mitigate my loss and prevent further damage to the painting by re-packaging and mailing it back to the gallery, I sought the advice of both a local art restorer and a family friend who works as a professional art dealer, valuer and historian and has served as the director of a number of Australian galleries, including the Canberra Museum and Gallery. My family friend informed me that direct contact with bubble wrap will affect a new oil painting that has not completely dried, and the art restorer said that the painting could not be restored without affecting the appearance of the work. I couriered the painting back to Christine at the gallery at the end of November, but when it arrived at the beginning of December, she refused to accept delivery, emailing not me, but my mother(!) to say that she would not accept delivery of the painting as I had not returned it in 7 days - a condition stipulated neither by her or New Zealand consumer law. Why Christine would email my mother (who foolishly visited the gallery a month after me to enquire about a purchase) regarding this matter and not me perplexed me. I figured that it was her small-minded way of condescending me, a young solicitor in his late 20s. In response to Christine's refusal to accept delivery, I explained to her that she had no right to refuse to remedy the problem and I provided her with all of the information I had gathered from the art restorer and my family friend. She sent me a rude and incredibly condescending reply in which she not only denied any responsibility for the damage, but belittled my knowledge of New Zealand consumer law and questioned the knowledge and integrity of my family friend, the 'expert' (as she referred to her, quotation marks and all). The situation reached the point where I had to engage the services of a New Zealand law firm to demand a full refund from the gallery. The gallery owners were defiant in their response, and claimed that the damage to the painting existed at the time of purchase. In other words, the gallery implied that it had sold a damaged painting to me - which was in my opinion far more egregious than what I originally believed - that the painting was damaged by unprofessional and careless packaging. The gallery agreed to pay my return shipping costs and said that they would have the artist fix the painting and return it to me by the end of February 2016, but were adamant in refusing to refund me for the painting. February 2016 came and went and I did not hear from Christine Jones until April 2016. She claimed that the elusive June Wood (who, mind you, is completely unknown to Google) had injured her shoulder and could not fix the painting, and the gallery had therefore decided to refund my credit card for the painting - something they should have done right at the beginning of the whole ordeal. Ultimately, this experience left me almost $900 NZD in legal fees out of pocket, consumed a significant amount of my time and caused me a great deal of stress. Take my advice and buy your souvenir paintings elsewhere unless you want to be treated with utter contempt by the horrible owners of this so-called gallery. You'd be better off supporting any of the many local artists who sell their own paintings along the waterfront. Absolutely disgraceful.