A Very Special Place: Ikon in the 90s features works by 40 artists from the gallery’s 1990s programme, which brought forth seminal shows focusing on current affairs and issues surrounding class, racial and sexual politics.
Included in the exhibition is Yinka Shonibare CBE’s Diary of a Victorian Dandy, 1998, which was originally on view in the artist’s solo show Dressing Down at Ikon gallery in 1999. The work is based on William Hogarth’s series A Rakes Progress and depicts Shonibare as a 19th century gentleman in the thralls of excess and decadence, whilst at the same time inverting the stereotype of otherness through the figure of the black dandy.