The pulse of Newtown: Inside Constable St’s artist community
Saturday, 21 March 2026
From inside her studio in the Wellington suburb of Newtown, artist Fleur Wickes watches the day flow past like a river.
Cars drive by, dogs pause at the door to take a sip of water, and, every so often, a walker knocks. Inside, Wickes is able to feel connected to the outside world, while also having ample personal space to create and throw paint at canvasses.
Across and up the street, Kim Young and Duncan Sargent, co-directors of Rice Pudding gallery, are helping facilitate solo and collaborative exhibitions, small gatherings and even DJ events with shared kai in their small artist-run space, which used to be a grocery store.
Down the road, gallerist Petra Scheuber has this year transitioned Twentysix Gallery to a new commercial dealer model, and organises a popular annual Newtown Festival party at the premises with her wider team.
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Just a couple of doors down at Newday cafe, barista and artist Meg Rea is encouraged to show her pieces in a micro-installation to customers.
All this and more is happening on a regular day at Constable St, a key transport route connecting Newtown to Kilbirnie and the rest of Wellington’s eastern peninsula.
While also a major traffic thoroughfare, in recent years it’s become a thriving creative community in its own right ‒ a contributor to Newtown’s wider artsy vibe and energy, but connected in its own unique Constable St way; a sort of precinct-within-a-precinct.
“The community is really powerful here. It’s really strong,” Wickes tells The Post in an interview. “It’s just got a really diverse, fantastic feeling, as with all of Newtown.
“… It’s the vibe. It’s got that creative energy, and the energy that comes with a diverse mix of people. … I’ve got a lot more contact with other artists than I [previously] had here. My work has got better. I’m thinking more laterally. I’ve taken quite a lot of big steps in my practice. It’s really been amazing.”
The rise of grassroots exhibiting
In 2022, Young and Sargent established Rice Pudding at 91 Constable St to meet the need for a local space that fills the gap between community facility and dealer gallery.
With the help of their daughters Coco and Pippi Sargent, who are also involved in the business and run Rice Pudding’s social media, the kaupapa is to provide building blocks and a physical space for artists to show their work in an environment that’s affordable, accessible and supportive.
At the time of interviewing, the pair only had two spaces left available this year, which they say proves the need for galleries like Rice Pudding and what it provides.
All artists, including New Zealanders and international artists, are supported to exhibit. Past shows include from Massey University students, Te Hopai rest home resident artists, and from people in the Newtown community.
The gallery’s exhibitions, what’s in them, and how they’re displayed are all determined by the artists ‒ something that helps ensure a huge variety of mediums.
At the end of each year, Rice Pudding hosts an annual group show with artists who have shown in the gallery over the preceding 12 months; and they also sometimes help connect people with dealer galleries such as Bowen Galleries or Webb’s.
“We’re always excited when artists move on to exhibit with them,” Young says.
“Newtown has a creative energy and Constable St is super busy with people passing in buses and cars, on bikes and walking. It has a great community feeling. People say hi and look after one another.”
Because many people on the street share the same goal of supporting artists, Young says there’s informal sharing of advice, ideas and resources ‒ and cross-promotion.
For example, Rea, who has set up a mini-exhibition at Newday cafe down the road, has her first solo exhibition coming up at Rice Pudding.
Based in the neighbouring suburb of Berhampore, just a five-minute trip away, she primarily works with ceramics, but also dabbles in glass/leadlight, food, wire, and other materials.
“I haven’t really considered town that much [for an exhibition] because part of why I love this space is having made connections to artists and those with gallery spaces through the cafe and over coffee,” Rea says.
Working as a barista at Newday has helped Rea build the kinds of connections with writers, photographers and poster designers that only happen slowly ‒ repeated interactions where individuals see each other regularly, make the effort to ask each other what they do, and just in general care enough to support each other’s pursuits.
Rea first started exhibiting in Newday when the cafe was known as Peoples, and says doing so has allowed her to learn how to brand and sell as an artist, within the context and safety of her friends, colleagues and community members.
“It’s also just fun, playful and not serious. Sometimes galleries can feel a bit stiff, and like there are a bunch of secret rules. … It’s nice to know that the barrier between fun and craft and art and connection and community might all be blurred a bit in having something sweet to look at, while you wait to order or receive a long black.”
As well as being a conversation starter for customers, it’s meant Rea is often around to share in the giggles, or answer any questions people may have about her work.
She says grassroots art projects are popping up in unexpected places all over Newtown.
“It’s inspiring to see what other artists are up to; and I might have felt more hesitant about sharing my work if it weren’t for the exhibitions, dioramas, sculptures, and other things we see peppered around Newtown.”
In this sense, Constable St can be viewed as a microclimate of a much larger, more dense and diverse ecosystem: other creative spaces in the broader Newtown area include the artist-run Uindō95 gallery, Artists 24.7 gallery, Black Coffee cafe, and the Dom Polski building that’s now home to the Nautilus creative community.
While all of the above are on the suburb’s main stretch of Riddiford St, nearby is also the Te Whaea National Dance and Drama Centre that houses the New Zealand School of Dance and Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School; not to mention its neighbours The Circus Hub, and the Tāwhiri Warehouse venue.
Meanwhile, the newest gallery on Constable St, The Temple of Art, shows work by various artists.
A street that’s growing ‒ and changing
Five years ago during Newtown Festival, Twentysix Gallery opened in a space that used to be a plumbing showroom, which had sat empty and idle for a couple of years.
Scheuber and her partner, who became owners of the building, saw an opportunity to renovate it, and it didn’t take long for students to ask if they could use the generous, industrial, ground-floor space for exhibitions.
“Being right on the street in the heart of Newtown where lots of artists and locals pass by, made it feel like the perfect spot,” Scheuber says.
This year Twentysix has transitioned to a dealer gallery, born from Scheuber wanting to take some of the load off artists when it came to organising openings, promoting shows, photographing artworks, coordinating sales, and packing and shipping works to collectors.
In addition to everyone doing their own thing and the street’s relaxed, welcoming and inspiring buzz, Scheuber says the area has grit and real character thanks to its mix of communities and cultures.
“There’s a strong sense of openness and creativity here, which makes it a natural place for artists to connect and share ideas. We try to reflect that at Twentysix with our events: from openings and parties to BBQs that spill out onto the street,” Scheuber says.
“It’s a gallery, but we also want it to be a place where people can gather and be around art.”
Over the past year, Fleur Wickes has based her creative practice just up the road at numbers 74 and 76 Constable St, a pair of neighbouring properties with what she describes as beautiful energy and really good light.
With 74 being more like a studio, and 76 more being like a showroom, self-represented Wickes has this year made the tough decision to end her lease at 76, but retain 74, as she is focusing a lot more on making.
“But I’m finding it a bit difficult to leave,” she laughs.
Wickes previously lived on Newtown’s Mein St in her 20s, and says the suburb has not changed much since then.
“I’ve just had some really good, interesting conversations here. Around the corner is this really lovely artist, I don’t know her last name, but she’s fantastic. There’s a couple of musicians I know that live around here. I feel like I can be doing my own work, but surrounded by people who are also doing creative work,” she says.
Nearby is also the creative headquarters of contemporary Māori artist and photographer Neil Pardington, the brother of Fiona Pardington, who’s representing Aotearoa at the Venice Biennale this year.
Wickes, who has been an artist for more than three decades, says that when you work on your own, it can be easy to get in your own head.
“That’s what’s lovely [about being here]; I can walk down and have a chat, or go across to have a chat. I had an opening here and so many people came that the windows steamed up. It was so great.”
On a typical day after arriving at her studio, she strolls to Newday to get a coffee and to say hello to everyone else who does the same thing.
Stepping out of the door, Wickes says she finds inspiration in seeing what others are doing. The street in this way solves a core creative tension: artists need isolation to make work; but connection to sustain it.
Wickes, who often writes messages and phrases in her windows, says Newtown feels like a true community ‒ from its families and hospital workers to artists and those who live more on society’s edges.
“It’s really easy in our lives to be in these homogeneous bubbles. I live way across town and it’s a different vibe there. There are a lot of young people in Newtown, which I like. That energy, aliveness, onto it-ness, it’s really bloody good.”
The fragility of an ecosystem
But as much as its many amazing creative spaces would have you believe the Constable St ecosystem is gathering momentum, there’s also a sense of precarity bubbling underneath the surface ‒ artists’ financial margins are often thin, there’s a lack of support for creative careers more generally, and the ongoing cost of living crisis has resulted in the closure of many nearby local businesses.
Wickes says she’d love to see another arts space populate one of the area’s several vacant buildings, in which creative people of all backgrounds and experience levels could host workshops, gatherings, and show work ‒ a hub, of sorts.
“It would be amazing,” she says. “It’s been really nice to be supported ‒ to feel such support ‒ from both the artists here and the people that know my work. I’ve had a lot of support here. It’s beautiful, really.”