Name: Marriage Flag
Brand: Grayson Perry
Rating: 4.9 (225 reviews)

Track auction value trend

Grayson Perry's Marriage Flag, an unsigned embroidery artwork from 2019, is estimated to be valued between £2,650 and £4,000. This artwork has shown consistent value growth, with an average annual growth rate of 5%. The hammer price over the past five years has ranged from £2,165 in January 2020 to £2,800 in December 2019. This artwork is rare, with an auction history of two sales since its entry to the market in December 2019. The edition size of this artwork is limited to 45.

Auction Date

Auction House

Artwork

Hammer Price

Return to Seller

Buyer Paid

January 2020

Phillips London - United Kingdom

Marriage Flag - Embroidery

December 2019

Forum Auctions London - United Kingdom

Marriage Flag - Embroidery

Meaning & Analysis

This beautiful embroidery from 2019 is a rare limited edition of 45 from Grayson Perry’s Embroidery collection. The flag is vertically divided into two sections by the shape of a tree, which separates the characters who look like modern renditions of Adam and Eve. Surrounded by all the gadgets of modern life, from a car to glasses, Adam and Eve embody a happy and content family tending to their two children, dog and cat.

The embroidery was made in support of Koestler Arts, a UK-based charity active in the criminal justice system which seeks to encourage the detainees to participate in the arts.

In his typical manner, Perry uses here once again bright and colourful tones - in this case, the colours pink, red, blue, white and green dominate the scene - and an assembly of symbols and characters which do not follow a linear narrative to convey his societal commentaries. The work strikes in its celebratory tone of family life, which distinguishes it from other pieces like Six Snapshots Of Julie or The Vanity Of Small Differences, where Perry makes use of his distinctive satirical and dark humour.

In Marriage Flag, Perry weaves together the most classical of references, the story of Adam and Eve, with a traditional medium, that of embroidery, to convey and offer a positive message of hope.

The highest value realised for a work by Grayson Perry was in October 2017, when I Want To Be An Artist fetched £632,750 at Christie's, London. The values achieved for Perry's work at auction regularly land in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.