‘The weirdos were taking over!’ Tate Britain relives the 1990s
A new exhibition curated by Edward Enniful looks back on the thrilling decade before smartphones, when art, music and fashion came together with a bang
TL;DR
- Tate Britain's exhibition 'The 90s: Art and Fashion' explores the intersection of art and fashion photography in 1990s Britain.
- The 90s are characterized as the last offline decade, before the pervasive influence of smartphones and social media.
- The exhibition emphasizes a broader landscape of practices and voices, recognizing distributed energy across communities and disciplines.
- Key figures like Jarvis Cocker and Normski reflect on the cultural shifts and diverse scenes of the era.
- Advances in publishing, photography, and media circulation enabled greater speed and immediacy in image-making.
- Magazines like i-D and The Face captured youth culture, identity, and style through a new realism in photography.
- Photographers like Nigel Shafran, Juergen Teller, and Corinne Day presented unfiltered, documentary-style narratives.
- The exhibition aims to reconsider the 90s not as a closed historical moment but as an ongoing point of reference, engaging with its legacy of challenging and reimagining culture.