In the early 1990s conceptual art was at the height of fashion in London. Ignoring the prevailing taste, Brown instead painted sensual — erotic — subject matter, fragmenting the human body in unsettling ways. But she regards her practice as distinctly feminist. ‘I’ve always wondered, what is so masculine about abstraction? How did men get the ownership of this?’

Combing the Hair depicts a sunny beach in the south of France: scantily-clad bodies, fragmented genitalia, the titular comb swirl in blurs of visceral pinks and reds. It is a celebration of unadulterated carnality.