Kirikiriroa’s newest art collective explosive debut
Sixty-three artists and more than 160 artworks came together for ‘Artbomb!’, showcasing the creativity behind Kirikiriroa’s newest artists’ collective, The Continuum.
“We wanted to create opportunities for people to showcase their work,”
Micayla were
The Continuum is a Kirikiriroa based artists collective that was founded by a group of contemporary art students and enthusiasts. It formed in 2026, aiming to create a space in the Waikato region where art can exist for the sake of art, and where artists could meet each other and share their work.
The Continuum’s objective is to “bring together artists and allsorts to explore the continuation of creativity in our community”.
Micayla Were is a multidisciplinary creative, student and one of the founders of The Continuum Collective. She said one of the collective’s first steps was putting out an open call for an exhibition.
“We wanted to create opportunities for people to showcase their work,” Were said.
She added: “We wanted to celebrate the variety of creativity happening within the community.”
The result was Artbomb!, an exhibition bringing together 63 artists and more than 160 artworks across a variety of mediums, united by one shared passion: creativity.
Held on a Tuesday night in October in Wintec’s Te Whare Toi Gallery, paintings hung shoulder-to-shoulder, while photographs, prints, mixed-media works and experiments competed for space. Artists lingered beside their work, talking to strangers. Students stood alongside retirees and emerging creatives sharing wall space with established practitioners.
Were said, “Our oldest artist was 86, and our youngest was 14. We didn’t target any demographic specifically, so it was really special to see.”
While Artbomb! was put together by the collective officially, every artist participated and made the choice to share their work.
Were said they had a lot of support from the artists, friends and locals, and that the level of work that was submitted and the number of people who turned up on opening night “was amazing”.
The Continuum is a group that is for everyone. It’s free, with no obligations or age restrictions and exists for people to be creative in any medium at any level.
Artbomb! marked the collective’s first exhibition and served as a starting point for building a closer creative community in Kirikiriroa.
The word continuum is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a coherent whole characterised as a collection, sequence, or progression of values or elements varying by minute degrees”.
In many ways, Artbomb! embodied that idea. Its response demonstrated the breadth of creative talent across Kirikiriroa and showed what can happen when artists are given the space and opportunity to come together.
Those interested in getting involved can sign up for the collective’s upcoming newsletter or follow its Linktree to keep up with six-weekly meetups or events and other activities.
