Since the mid-1980s, Mark Wallinger has been making work about the traditions and values of British society, its class system and organized religion. Browns (Mr. David Brown) is part of a series of 42 paintings of jockeys' livery colours, entitled 'Brown's’. In each painting, the livery colours shown are for jockeys who rode for owners with the surname Brown. Wallinger was interested by the irony in the range of colours registered to that particular surname, noting that if all the different paints on a palette are mixed together, the end result is generally brown. Themes of class and identity are important in Wallinger's work, and he has commented on how it is only the apostrophe in the title 'Brown's' which differentiates between appearance and ownership.
MARK WALLINGER (British, 1959)
Oil on canvas
110 x 110 cm
Acquired in 1997
