The Unconformity Festival Brings Out The Best Of Queenstown
Every two years, Queenstown on the rugged west coast of Tasmania transforms into a creative haven for the region’s thriving arts community.
Now in its 15th year, The Unconformity is a biennial arts and cultural festival that amplifies the unique artistic identity of the West Coast region in a contemporary celebration of Queenstown’s rich history.
Originally founded as Queenstown Arts & Heritage Festival, it has become a staple of the national cultural calendar attracting thousands of local and interstate visitors for an immersive four-day experience.
“Our event doesn’t buy work off the shelf,” says The Unconformity CEO Louisa Gordon.
“It’s not a food festival, it’s not an event based on something more commercial, it is very much arts based. Tourists are attracted to that because they want a very different experience, they want to be connected with community while they are here. They want to know it’s born of this place and that they can really embed themselves and connect with that while they are here.”
In 2025, The Unconformity presents more than 60 place-responsive events featuring 121 local, national, and international artists. Spanning installations, performances, live music, and conversations, the program connects deeply with the region’s landscapes, heritage and people.
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More than just a festival, The Unconformity operates year-round as an arts organisation that works to support and promote the local West Coast arts community. Louisa stepped into the role of CEO in July last year, taking over from founding CEO and artistic director Travis Tiddy.
Louisa has an extensive and impressive career as an arts manager, working in various leadership roles across the country with organisations such as Mona Foma, Queensland Music Festival and Northern Rivers Performing Arts over the past 25 years. In her first year leading The Unconformity, Louisa says she wanted to build on the valuable legacy she and her team have inherited.
“We’re not just a festival, but also a cultural organisation for the West Coast,” she says.
“It always my ambition to promote arts and events as being an industry that should sit along with others. So often in politics when they’re electioneering, events and arts aren’t up there and yet they support them and value them. I see us as, if I can put it in sporting terms, a high-performance centre for environmentally place-based experimental artwork.”
The Unconformity is a festival that embraces the conflicts and contradictions that define the characteristic charm of Queenstown and the wider West Coast region as well as the inhabitants. It’s a wild place where environment and ancient culture clashes with industry and the onset of modernity. Boom and bust, industry and nature. Louisa describes it as: “conflict plus community and connection.”
It’s in this spirit that Louisa’s new Artistic Director Loren Kronemyer chose the theme of ‘respawning’ for this year’s festival.
“What comes next after the fire comes through? The green shoots, and that’s particularly relevant to us in our roles,” Louisa says.
“What influence and experience do we bring now into the context of this festival that has its roots in heritage and the history of the West Coast? It’s reinterpreting history in a very contemporary way and that’s what a lot of the work does.”
Among the remains of its colonial history is the pioneering spirit of its people, especially within the arts community. Isolated from mainland Australia and urban centres, artists in Queenstown and the surrounding region have been conditioned to make use of the resources available to them. In the words of Australian artist Raymond Arnold, Queenstown is an “art mining town”.
“If you don’t have it, then you make it,” Louisa states.
“If it’s not here, then you make it happen, because it’s such a regional and isolated place it’s that spirit of we don’t have all the tools and we don’t have all the mechanics to create the work, but we’ll make it happen.
“It’s an important way of expression when you’re so isolated. You have to make it here and you’re working in isolation. The environment is such an influence on that; three quarters of the year it rains here, the roaring 40s hitting the west coast, and we live in a rainforest here, so it plays such an intense part in influencing the artwork.”
The 2025 edition of The Unconformity festival is already underway and will be the ultimate test for Louisa and her team in their first year managing the event. Looking to the future, Louisa envisions passing this proud legacy onto the next generation of arts professionals.
“The future is maintaining the spirit of the place here,” she says.
“One of my passions is doing more to represent or engage people who don’t think they are creative into the work. Working in the schools, young people are very important. Curriculum in arts training and music has dropped off across the country.
“We’ve received that legacy, but then what can ours be to ensure the future of that and remaining strong here on the West Coast.”
The 2025 Unconformity festival runs from 16-19 October. Book now for the 2027 event.
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