Former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful has curated a major Tate Britain exhibition exploring art and fashion during the 1990s.
Set to launch in autumn this year, the show will feature work from nearly 70 individuals including fashion designer Alexander McQueen and artist Damien Hirst.
The exhibition, titled The 90s: Art And Fashion, will explore the surge of creative energy during the decade, which Enninful said “established conditions that are still with us”.
It will spotlight work from young artistic talent that emerged during the period and give UK audiences the opportunity to reconsider the time as a “turning point” in British art.
Photography from Corinne Day, Nigel Shafran and Juergen Teller for publications including i-D and Dazed And Confused will be featured, alongside artwork such as Chris Ofili’s award-winning No Woman, No Cry painting.
Spread across multiple rooms, the show will bring together more than 100 photographs, paintings, sculptures and garments.
Speaking at a press launch for the exhibition on Monday, Enninful said the year of 1990 was a “moment of transition”.The 54-year-old added: “London at the time wasn’t the polished global capital it is today – it was raw, unstable and full of possibility.
“There was a sense that something was shifting, even if we didn’t have the language for it.
“What defined that period for me was not a single movement, but an energy – a refusal of hierarchy and a belief that new voices could and should be heard across art, fashion, music and image making.”
He said that for him, as a young black man from Ladbroke Grove, west London, the moment was also about “access” and “finding a place within spaces that hadn’t been built with you in mind”.
He added: “This exhibition is not about nostalgia, it’s about understanding a moment that continues to shape how we think, how we create, how we see.
“The 1990s established conditions that are still with us.
“The merging of high and low culture, the politicisation of fashion and image and the emergence of diversity as a creative force.
“And perhaps, most importantly, it reminds us the questions we were asking then remain urgent now, questions of visibility, access and who gets to be seen.
“So this exhibition is an invitation, not to look back, but to look again, to reconsider that decade, not as a closed chapter, but as something still unfolding”
Enninful was Vogue’s first black editor-in-chief, and became the youngest fashion editor at a major international title when he took on the role of fashion director at i-D Magazine aged 18.
Born in Ghana and raised in Ladbroke Grove, he is known for his championing of diversity in fashion, and was made an OBE in 2016 for his services to fashion.
The 90s: Art And Fashion exhibition will run at Tate Britain in Westminster from October 8 to February 14 next year.
