Wakefield Kirkgate Station
Monk Street, WF1 4ELComing up at the next Artwalk on 27th May
Can You Really See Me?
Prince of Wales Hospice
This piece is part of an art project that explores the barriers created by labels. Within the hospice, we work holistically, striving to see the person beyond their diagnosis, role, or circumstance. This work challenges the viewer to question whether we truly achieve that.
The obscured window physically disrupts the act of seeing, forcing the viewer to look harder and more intentionally. It reflects how perception is often clouded by assumptions and preconceptions.
Surrounding the central figure are suspended labels—words contributed by patients, carers, and staff. These words represent identities and descriptors that can act as barriers, blocking or distorting how a person is understood. They distract, interrupt, and impose meaning before true connection can occur.
At the centre, the figure represents the essence of a person: multifaceted, complex, and irreducible to a single definition. Despite the surrounding noise of labels, this core identity remains—yet it requires effort, empathy, and awareness to truly see it.
Ultimately, Can You Really See Me? invites the viewer to reflect on their own perceptions and to consider how easily we allow labels to obscure the human being in front of us.
Installation available 24/7 as gallery is on the station platform and purpose is to view through the window.
Community Gallery
Open 5pm-8pm
We Look With Eyes Of Others - Blinkered Sheep
Marie Keen
I love the quote that says ‘The eyes are the windows to the soul.’ We sometimes forget that windows are generally a two way screen. We look into other windows, we are naturally nosy, but all too often we forget to look out of those eyes with our soul and heart instead of with anger. Too frequently what we think we see is what others tell us too. We forget to do our own due diligence.
People under the LGBTQIA umbrella often find themselves on the forefront of abuse from misdirected misinformation. We are frequently viewed, scorned and prodded like animals in a petting zoo.
Art can be used to break down some of those barriers. Art should make people think and question what it is they are seeing. Why is that and this - what was the artist thinking when they painted that bit or what was the concept for the piece.
As I wrote earlier; I wish for people to look at the art and, question and ask. To think about what their soul sees, not just what others tell them too. Barriers can be broken down and walls rebuilt, but people have to think for themselves and open their eyes.
Marie is a local artist who uses various mediums including acrylic, graphite charcoal and traditional oils to create unique works. She likes to create art that makes us question and think about what we think we know and how we view the world.
Marie lives in Wakefield with her wife and two cats.
Platform 1
Open 5pm-8pm
Previously at Wakefield Kirkgate Station
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An Artist's Happy Place Wed 25th Mar 2026Artist studio 'scene'. It symbolises 'the happy place' of the exhibiting artist. It will show items of work in different states - work in progress on the easel, completed work hung up 'to dry', mounted pieces, framed pieces. Self-taught artist who discovered a love of creativity during 2024. Art became her therapy during a tough period in her life. The studio she set up in a spare bedroom at home, quickly became her 'happy place'. It signified a safe space in which she found ways to release her creative energy and clear her mind ...excitedly waiting to see what was created 'in the moment'. She continues to create recreationally and ventures, sometimes, in to offering her work for sale. She hopes you'll pop along to have a look at her work during the artwalk (the installation will be in place between 15th and 29th March).
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Emergence Wed 26th Nov 2025This suspended sculptural installation was created during Helen’s environmental artist residency in Selby in early 2025. During the residency, she explored Selby’s landscape, collaborated with local community groups through nature-connection workshops, and produced ephemeral works using found natural materials. This installation evolved from those explorations, reflecting on the resilient beauty of nature’s cycles of growth, transformation, and decay over the changing season. Decaying leaves and seed heads gathered from the grounds of Selby Abbey were magnified and laser-cut onto pages from discarded Selby Library books, giving new life to materials once thought as waste. The piece was produced using the laser-cutting facilities at The Art House, Wakefield. Helen is an artist based in West Yorkshire. Emergence was commissioned by Now Then!, a creative programme making exciting things happen in Tadcaster, Selby, and Sherburn thanks to funding from North Yorkshire Council, Arts Council England and UKSPF.
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Pontefract Art Club Wed 26th Nov 2025Pontefract Art Club have displayed a number of paintings in the Community Gallery on Platform 2 at Kirkgate Train Station.
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Tom Puddings at Stanley Ferry Wed 24th Sep 2025Come along to the island platform of Wakefield's Kirkgate Railway Station to see Wakefield Railway Modellers recreation of the Tom Puddings at Newland Basin, Stanley Ferry on the Aire & Calder Navigation. It will be on display at the station until Thursday 2nd October when it will move to WX Wakefield Exchange to participate in the Civic Society's unveiling of their Blue Plaque to Thomas Peckett, the locally-born engineer famous for locomotive manufacturing, and then at the WRMS exhibition at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School 11-12 October.
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In Memory of Joe Wed 30th Jul 2025This exhibition records my first portrait painted in oils with a live model, it then goes on to record art work completed in the first few months of lockdown, up to the sudden death of my eldest son in May 2020. I was unable to complete a painting I was working on at this time and found it really difficult to connect with my art. In July 2022, I decided to try to compete a sketch a day to get my mojo back - it worked. All the work exhibited were drawn / painted en plein air.
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Tree of Life Wed 28th May 2025This mixed media art exhibit was facilitated by the Outreach Team at Wakefield Hospice. The collaborative piece of artwork was created to provide an expression of belonging, friendship and sense of achievement for individuals within Wakefield, who are living with, or been impacted by life-limiting conditions. The group ran at The Art House for 10 weeks, and gave group members a chance to learn more around hospice and end-of-life care services available in the local area.