Blusher

Art, Makeup, Materiality

12 July – 6 September 2025

Alison Jones, Lindsey Bull, Annabel Dover, Cathy Lomax, Eugenia Cuellar, Sally Kindberg, Rebecca Parkin, Athen Kardashian & Nina Mhach Durban, Gemma Browne, Cary Kwok, Xingxin Hu, Alexis Soul Gray, Caroline Zurmely, Hilde Krohn Huse, Michael Fullerton, Christine Stewart, Lucy Brown, Sarah Doyle, Mary Modha, Lisa Milroy, Madelynn Green, Kate Murdoch, Mo Throp, Erica Eyres, Fiona G Roberts, Caroline Walker, Paul Kindersley, Rosemary Cronin, Ruth Heaton, Jennifer Merrell, Stacy Greene, Ty Locke, Rose Wylie, Karla Black, Jennifer Caroline Campbell, Lucienne Cole, Katherine Allen, Matilda Moors

Curated by Cathy Lomax

Makeup is a malleable medium; painterly and symbolic, with an ability to conceal and transform appearance. It is a marker of both female emancipation and our subjugation to the dictates of a patriarchal capitalist culture.

Makeup is often referred to as an art in glossy magazines and coffee table books. But how does art deal with makeup? The visual, material, and experiential connections, between making-up and artmaking are apparent, but makeup’s connection with femininity problematises it, connecting it to artforms and aesthetics rich in colour and decoration which have historically been considered trivial and unworthy of serious academic interest. Beyond this, patriarchal societies have always had a complex relationship with makeup; ill at ease with its role in beautification, deception, and sexual allure, but appreciative of a ’naturally’ made-up female face. Consequently, for long periods of history makeup has been a taboo in polite society.

Inspired by the formal transformative qualities of makeup, alongside its hapticity, role in ritual, and position in the commodification and codification of gender and race, Blusher unashamedly foregrounds this versatile medium, with work by artists that showcase makeup’s multifarious meanings in a variety of media.