The Vision
Big dreams. Small pockets. Long game.
Provocation Station isn’t just a website — it’s a platform, a publishing house, and a kaupapa. It exists for artists whose work sits at the edges: conceptual, Indigenous, relational, and resistant to the usual metrics of success. We’re not trying to scale fast or play by extractive rules. We’re trying to make something that lasts — and that nourishes.
This project has always been designed to unfold in phases: slowly, intentionally, and with space to respond as we go. We’re building the thing we wish already existed.
The Phases
Phase One: The Launch Pad
This is the now. The pilot season.
We’re rolling out curated writing, interviews, and provocations. Publishing essays that speak from the chest. Launching online series like Life After Art School to platform honest kōrero about survival, meaning, and practice.
We’re also opening an online shop — a space where artists can sell conceptual, kaupapa-led works like zines, prints, or affordable editioned pieces. It’s small, deliberate, and artist-first. We want the shop to support the mahi — not exploit it.
Why it matters: Conceptual, Indigenous, and decolonial work often falls between cracks — too resistant for the market, too embodied for academia. This phase is about building infrastructure for those artists. Testing, gathering, and planting seeds.
Phase Two: The Print Era
We’re creating an annual book — a curated collection of essays, images, interviews, and provocations that doesn’t try to speak for everyone but holds space for many.
It won’t be just a catalogue or a journal. It’ll be a beautifully designed, kaupapa-led publication that lives between a manifesto, a reader, and a conversation. Each issue will have a theme and an open call. It’ll grow slowly — with artists paid and design considered.
Why it matters: Not everyone engages online. Some things want to be held. Print is a slow medium. It allows for rereading, gifting, archiving, and resisting the scroll. It gives weight to the work — and to the people doing it.
Phase Three: The Activation Zone
This is where we go offline.
Potluck roundtables. Singing sessions. Craft nights. Artist-led workshops. Whanaungatanga at the centre — not ticket sales or institutional validation.
The events will be small, accessible, and grounded. They’ll happen in borrowed halls, backyards, and wherever the wairua is good. We’re planning seasonal rounds: community-led activations, artist talks, and kaupapa-based gatherings.
The Matariki Community Dawn Breakfast will be one of our first flagship community events, starting in Ōtautahi in 2026. It’s not about art-washing — it’s about real relationships, kai, and time together under the stars.
Why it matters: Conceptual art can be deeply relational. This phase reminds us that connection is infrastructure. It’s not just the work — it’s how we show up. How we feed each other. How we stay.
Phase Four: The Dream Biennial
A conceptual art biennial led by Indigenous artists. Decentralised, decolonial, and structured for care.
This won’t be a spectacle. It’ll be a porous, shifting, multi-site series of activations. Quiet work, big ideas, experimental formats. No one excluded for being too niche, too strange, or too soft. We’re imagining a model where the biennial lives in Aotearoa one year, then travels — hosted by Indigenous or aligned communities internationally in the years between.
Why it matters: Large-scale platforms are usually built by and for institutions. We want to prove that scale doesn’t have to mean compromise — that kaupapa-led curating can expand, adapt, and remain deeply grounded.
Phase Five: A Dedicated Whare
The dream-dream. A home for Provocation Station.
Part gallery, part workshop, part kitchen table, part living room. A whare that doesn’t require artists to contort themselves to fit — but adapts to hold them.
It would be a space for conceptual shows, artist residencies, shared kai, planning retreats, and everyday mess. It might include shared studios, archive rooms, or production support. The shape is flexible. The heart is not.
Why it matters: Artists need space. Space to gather, to think, to fail. Especially outside of institutions. Especially outside the market. This phase is about building something physical that reflects everything we’ve been holding digitally — a whare for making, holding, and protecting.
Get Involved
This kaupapa doesn’t exist without community. If you’re keen to tautoko, there are a few ways you can help us build the next phases:
Support the Kaupapa — contribute to one of our active funds, from backbone costs to specific projects like the Matariki Dawn Breakfast.
Submit Your Writing — we’re always looking for strong, thoughtful, kaupapa-aligned contributions.
Apply to Be a Represented Artist — if your work sits outside the usual commercial model but still deserves to be seen (and sold), this might be for you.
Check Our Open Calls — from community activations to print projects, everything current is listed here.
Come to an Event — potlucks, singing nights, artist kōrero. We’ll post upcoming programming as it develops.
We’re not trying to scale fast. We’re trying to grow right.