Edward Enninful’s ‘The 90s’ Brings the Rave to Tate Britain, and Splits the Critics

Tate Britain has a playlist now. In the lobby of The 90s: Art and Fashion, the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” gives way to Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity,” according to The Nerve, and a few rooms in, the walls fill up with ravers: the Haçienda in Manchester, Bagley’s in London and the Metalheadz sessions at the Blue Note in Hoxton Square, where Normski photographed Goldie in 1996.

The exhibition, open since Oct. 8 and running until Feb. 14, 2027, is curated by Edward Enninful, the former British Vogue editor who became i-D’s fashion director at 18, with a team of Tate curators. It brings together more than 100 photographs, paintings, sculptures and garments by nearly 70 artists, photographers and designers, from Corinne Day’s and Juergen Teller’s “anti-fashion” pictures for i-D and Dazed & Confused to a Damien Hirst shark in formaldehyde, Alexander McQueen’s Joan collection and Chris Ofili’s Turner Prize-winning No Woman, No Cry.

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The point, Enninful has said, was to look past the Young British Artists. “When they came to me initially they thought it was going to be a YBA exhibition,” he told Dazed before the opening. “I said, ‘you don’t need me for a YBA exhibition’.” Tracey Emin, Sarah Lucas and Hirst are here, but so are Sonia Boyce, Maud Sulter, Barbara Walker, Hamad Butt and the club photographer Normski, whose work Enninful brought to the Tate team himself.

The Club Room

For music fans, the nightlife gallery is the heart of the show. Dave Swindells, Peter J Walsh and Tony Davis document the birth of acid house; Normski, Eddie Otchere and Ewen Spencer follow jungle, hip-hop and drum and bass; Poulomi Desai, Stuart Linden Rhodes and Jon Shard shoot queer club nights; and Seana Gavin and Vinca Petersen bring back the free parties, Petersen with handwritten pages from her diary of the summer of 1995. Mark Leckey’s 1999 film Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore plays on a small monitor in the same room, a placement The Nerve’s Ben Luke thought sold one of the decade’s great artworks short.

Pop gets in elsewhere, too. When Juergen Teller brought up photographing Sinéad O’Connor around “Nothing Compares 2 U” in a conversation for Wallpaper*, Enninful told him the video is in the exhibition.

“It Was Political, Too”

Enninful has been careful to call this something other than a nostalgia trip. “I think the 90s has been sort of wrapped in nostalgia, but don’t forget it was also the time when people started talking about inclusivity and diversity,” he told Dazed. A room called Nation’s Finest takes on Cool Britannia, which its wall text calls a “patriotic myth,” through Black British artists and designers: Ofili’s painting, a tribute to Doreen and Stephen Lawrence that shares its title with the Bob Marley song, hangs near Ozwald Boateng’s tailoring, and Steve McQueen’s 1993 film Bear gets a room of its own.

It’s just my view of the 90s, with my friends, great artists that I was lucky enough to grow up with and be around, have a couple of drinks with.

Edward Enninful, Wallpaper*

The Critics Split

Not everyone bought it. The Times’ Waldemar Januszczak wrote, “I expected a celebration of the Nineties — instead it was a fashion disaster,” and the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones gave it one star: “this isn’t an exhibition, it’s a magazine spread.” The Telegraph’s Alastair Sooke went the other way, with five stars and a review that said the show left him “buzzing,” and The Independent gave it five as well, ARTnews reported.

The split runs along a line Enninful drew himself. “Art has to power every room,” he told Teller. Some reviewers, The Nerve and Luxury London among them, argue that the fashion photography from his magazine years crowds the art out. The curator Jessica Vaughan told ARTnews that some of the early criticism was that the YBAs weren’t included enough, and that the team wanted to spotlight artists “who we didn’t think got their dues.”

The show runs until Feb. 14. Before then, Tate is recording the Talk 90s to Me podcast live on Oct. 22, revisiting the decade’s music, fashion and politics; hosting a Late at Tate Britain night of art, music and performance on Nov. 13; and closing its 90s film series on Feb. 13 with Babymother, set in London’s dancehall scene.