Reece King’s exhibition, The Ogee & Manaia
14th Mar — 1st August, 2026
Hocken Gallery, first floor, Hocken Collections, 90 Anzac Avenue, Ōtepoti Dunedin
Hocken Collections is pleased to present a new exhibition of work by Reece King, 2025 Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago
Free
Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm. Closed public holidays and Tuesday 7 April.
Reece King’s exhibition, The Ogee & Manaia, is a generous selection of paintings made while the artist lived in Ōtepoti Dunedin as the 2025 Frances Hodgkins Fellow at the University of Otago – Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.
King’s paintings don’t provide instant answers or meanings; instead, they act as guardians and messengers, watching over you and speaking in riddles to inspire deep and different thinking.
‘The Ogee & Manaia’ is a phrase the artist chose from hundreds of observations about his paintings that he recorded in his studio notebook. An ogee is an S-shaped architectural feature, while a manaia is a spiritual guardian figure. Both forms are curvilinear, and potential relationships between them are visually expressed in the ampersand, ‘&’. This link expresses ongoing relational processes within the paintings and highlights the interconnectedness of all things.
Reece King grew up in Te Henga, on the west coast of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He holds a Master of Design in Painting (2021) and a Bachelor of Design and Visual Arts (2012) from Unitec. King founded Sanc Gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau in 2020. His work has been exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Anna Miles Gallery (Tāmaki Makaurau), Gallery 9 (Gadigal Sydney), CoCA - Centre of Contemporary Art (Ōtautahi Christchurch), and PEG Gallery (Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington). King is represented by Anna Miles Gallery (Tāmaki Makaurau).