Research on Gen Alpha and Gen Z consumerism in this area demonstrates how influencer culture, peer networks and more specifically, algorithm driven strategies promote and market to this generation without due care and attention to whether products are suitable or indeed safe for a generation that they are not specifically designed for. Ethical implications aside, does this trend simply mirror our societal need to collect, to consume or is it something altogether more sinister?

Dillon's practice has recently been concerned with a visual interrogation of this phenomenon, stemming from an overriding interest in her research around how we acquire and collect, the objects that form our material identities and the power that these objects hold in our sense of selves. The starting point for this exhibition comes from a visual enquiry into the excessive, perhaps banal and frivolous nature of the Sephora Kids phenomenon, and in particular the images and videos from social media that drive this consumer behaviour. Images form and weaved from cropped compositions and specific subject matter from her research, have been worked together from social media and television stills to exaggerate and zoom in on the processes of these beauty enhancement routines. Working in both paint and drawing, this recent body of work, is influenced both by the imagery and specific colour palette of the language of advertising by the cosmetic industry and the 'pinkification' of product marketing to this generation. Painted images mirror the scale of screens through which these messages are disseminated. Larger works on paper in the exhibition arise from research into specific haircare routines, the composition influenced by defined modes of detail erasure and research into early nineteenth century portrait and silhouette collage methods.