Tate 90s

When I got the enquiry about my work featuring in a brand-new exhibition at Tate Britain dedicated to the 90s, I was floored. And when I went to the 6,000-invite launch party and saw my name on London Underground station posters and sharing gallery space with the likes of Nick Knight, Alexander McQueen, Juergen Teller, Sarah Lucas, Normski and Vivienne Westwood, and there I was looking at the work surrounded by the likes of Donatella Versace, loads of supermodels and some of my favourite friends in the world, I was even more floored. And now looking back at a couple of very surreal weeks, with a Tate catalogue and postcards to hand featuring my work, I’m still floored.

There are four of my photographs in the show, and they include photos from Bugged Out, Garlands and Voodoo in Liverpool and Sugar Shack in Middlesbrough. But it’s the Garlands one that means the most. Two lads in home-customised T-shirts on a dance floor in the mid-90s.  And I also love the fact that not only had Tate made the image into a postcard but they’d also produced a set of acid house smiley stickers including one that said ‘Gorgeous’. Which then makes me think of Mark Jenkins, the creative genius behind much of what everybody loved about Garlands. We lost Mark (aka Emu) a few years ago and I really wish he could see how Garlands had made it to Tate Britain to represent acid house in such a massive celebration of the 90s.  He’d have been in his element, so this one’s for Emu.