Linton Meagher | Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe’s luminous profile emerges from hundreds of Botox vials, individually painted in oil and suspended within resin. From a distance, the image recalls the polished glamour of Hollywood portraiture; only upon closer inspection does its clinical construction reveal itself.

Linton Meagher draws together two powerful symbols of beauty: Monroe, whose image remains eternally fixed in the cultural imagination, and Botox, a material synonymous with the desire to arrest the passage of time. The work considers the distance between the public image and the private self - between beauty as something innate and beauty as something meticulously preserved.

Presented on clear Perspex, the portrait appears almost weightless. Light passes through the assembled vials, casting shifting shadows and allowing Marilyn’s image to hover between presence and memory - a fragile icon, suspended in time.