The show features work from nearly 70 artists, photographers, and designers, reports say. Highlights include Steve McQueen's 'Bear' (1993), Chris Ofili's 'No Woman, No Cry' (1998), and works by Young British Artists, Alexander McQueen, and Damien Hirst. Photography by Corinne Day, Juergen Teller, and others defines the era's grunge style. The exhibition also includes Keith Piper's video on national identity, Mark Leckey's 'Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore,' and works addressing identity and class. Other featured artists include Barbara Walker, Jenny Saville, Gillian Wearing, Tracey Emin, Hamad Butt, Hussein Chalayan, Yinka Shonibare, Vivienne Westwood, and John Galliano. The exhibition is spread across multiple rooms with over 100 photographs, paintings, sculptures, and garments.
Enninful said the 1990s were a time of transition: 'London at the time wasn't the polished global capital it is today – it was raw, unstable and full of possibility.' He described the period as defined by 'an energy – a refusal of hierarchy and a belief that new voices could and should be heard.' The exhibition, he said, is 'not about nostalgia' but an 'invitation to look again' at a decade that is 'still unfolding.' He added that for him as a young Black man, the moment was about 'access and finding a place within spaces that hadn't been built with you in mind.'
1990 was a moment of transition. 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.
The exhibition was not about nostalgia. The 1990s established conditions that are still with us.
It 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.
It was about access and finding a place within spaces that hadn't been built with you in mind.