Tāmaki Makaurau-based artist Reece King has been a quiet force within the local art world over the past ten years. As the founder of Sanc Gallery on Upper Queen Street in 2020, a self-dubbed ‘painter-run-space’, King has been at the fore of a wider shift towards and re-evaluation of painting, which had, in the years prior, been considered rather uncool.

The Church Road Winery Initiative, a new partnership between Church Road Winery and MTG Hawke’s Bay, can perhaps be seen as a reverberation of these changes. The award recognises an early-career painter with a generous commission, with MTG to acquire the resulting work. King was announced in October as the inaugural recipient, as selected by judges Chris Scott, Church Road’s Chief Winemaker, Toni MacKinnon, Curator at MTG, and Becky Hemus, Editorial Director of Art News.