URBAN DREAM STATION SERIES
Urban Dream Brokerage & KiwiRail welcome artist projects & communities into this vacant space!
Location: Wellington Railway Station, Bunny Street, Wellington
Property partner: Kiwirail
Dates: July to December 2026
Media Release: Linked here
Images: Florence Hilyer-Brandt
We are proud to announce a major series of public art projects over the remainder of 2026 at one of Wellington’s most beloved and beautiful heritage sites: Wellington Railway Station.
Supported by Kiwirail, the Urban Dream Station Series sees a range of leading artists and organisations across the arts presenting free experimental projects. They invite public participation and highlight the preciousness of the ornate 1937 Baroque and Jacobean styled interior architecture of our railway station.
The interactive projects will be based in the former New World supermarket site in the station, running between July and December. Featured creating daring new work are leading New Zealand artists like Seraphine Pick, Isabella Loudon, Gabby O’Connor, Jo Randerson and Steven Junil Park, leading producers Squiggla and Barbarian Productions and Melbourne public artmakers Strange Engine.
• Séraphine Pick & Isabella Loudon | Exhibition Making as Public Performance | July - October
Artists Séraphine Pick and Isabella Loudon are using the Railway Station as a temporary public studio while they develop a major collaborative exhibition for Whangārei Art Museum. The artists will open up the normally hidden process of exhibition-making, allowing the public to witness experimentation, failure, large-scale making and collaboration as the work unfolds over time.
• Gabby O’Connor | reflect, return. Video work | 26 July - 16 August
Gabby O’Connor’s project brings the presence of the ocean into Wellington Railway Station through a quiet video installation. Developed during her Ocean Collaboration Lab residency at Te Whare Hēra, the work reflects on the station’s relationship to harbour, land, fault lines and the shifting edges of Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
• Squiggla by Train | Public Art Making + Commuter Packs | 4 October - 25 October
Exercise your creative brain on the train! Squiggla invites people of all ages to discover the power of experimental drawing. Through weekend workshops using dots, lines and squiggles, respond to the station's grand architecture through art-making. Then, during your weekday evening commute, pick up a free Squiggla travel journal to make art on your train journey home, and share your work in a digital gallery. Celebrating public art, heritage and transport, Squiggla is a joyful collaborative creative intervention encouraging people to slow down and get inventive with mark making. No mistakes, only opportunities.
• Barbarian Productions - ClownWalk - An Interactive Activation | 26 October - 14 November
Barbarian Productions brings its playful, people-centred theatre practice into the Railway Station through Clown Walk. Moving through the public environment of the station, this activation uses clowning, performance and gentle disruption to shift how people experience a familiar civic space. The work invites humour, curiosity and unexpected connection, turning the everyday commute into a moment of theatre.
• Strange Engine | Diagrammatica - Interactive Art Making | 15 November - 15 December
Diagrammatica, presented by Strange Engine, is a genre-bending project that combines drawing, performance, sound, film and participatory ritual. Inspired by diagrams, systems and improvisation, the work invites audiences into a shifting field of marks, ideas and live composition. Within the Railway Station, Diagrammatica becomes a temporary architecture of thought and movement — a space where logic, abstraction and public encounter meet.