THE CITY OF SUBCULTURE: MARK ROCKY LEWIS BRINGS FOUR  DECADES OF BRITISH COUNTER-CULTURE TO SOUTHSEA  CINEMA

New exhibition celebrates Portsmouth’s outsiders, rebels, artists and grassroots cultural  pioneers 

Preview: Wednesday 26 August 2026, 7:00pm 

Exhibition: 26 August – 5 September 2026 

Southsea Cinema & Arts Centre, 1–3 Palmerston Road, Southsea, Portsmouth 

Southsea Cinema & Arts Centre is proud to present The City of Subculture, a new exhibition  by Portsmouth artist, muralist and cultural activist Mark Rocky Lewis, opening with a  special preview event at 7pm on Wednesday 26 August. 

Drawing on almost four decades of personal memories, music, art, activism and British  counter-culture, the exhibition is part artwork, part archive and part challenge to how we  define culture — and who gets to define it. 

For Mark, this is not simply an exhibition about nostalgia. It is a celebration of the people and  movements that have existed outside the mainstream: punks, ravers, rockabillies, teddy boys,  hippies, musicians, DJs, muralists, activists and self-taught artists. 

“Culture grows from the bottom up. It comes from bedrooms, garages, back rooms,  community centres, pubs, streets, squats, clubs, studios, parks and kitchens.” — Mark Rocky Lewis 

A LIFE OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM 

Mark describes his exhibition as a collection of personal fragments from growing up in the  south of England during the 1980s and 1990s and a life spent largely outside conventional  cultural structures. 

His journey has taken him through multiple subcultures — from teddy boys and rockabilly to  psychobilly, punk, hippie and rave culture — while his professional life has been built around  mural painting, creativity, community and activism. 

Having left school without formal qualifications and experienced periods of serious personal  difficulty, Mark believes his life demonstrates that education, qualifications or past mistakes  should not determine a person’s future. 

Over nearly four decades as a self-employed muralist, he has created work for audiences in  Portsmouth and beyond and developed a vast personal archive of physical memories from 

British cultural life. 

His collection includes thousands of rave flyers, vinyl records, cassette tapes, gig tickets,  T-shirts, posters, magazines, badges, books, newspaper cuttings and protest  memorabilia. 

PRESERVING A PHYSICAL CULTURE 

At the heart of the exhibition is Mark’s fascination with a generation that grew up surrounded  by physical cultural objects. 

Before everything moved online, people held their music, kept their gig tickets, collected  flyers, stuck posters on bedroom walls and stored memories in boxes. 

Mark has transformed these fragments into a large-scale counter-culture collage, creating  what he describes as a physical piece of his own life. 

“We were possibly the last generation to grow up with physical memories,” he says. “I wanted to see those memories every day.” 

The result is a colorful, highly personal visual history of British youth culture — seen not  through official archives, but through the objects and experiences of someone who lived it. 

THE CITY OF SUBCULTURE 

The exhibition takes its title from Mark’s belief that Portsmouth has a rich cultural history  that exists far beyond its established institutions. 

With Portsmouth currently developing its ambitions around UK City of Culture 2029, Mark  wants to ask a simple but provocative question: 

Who gets to be part of the city’s cultural story? 

His argument is that culture should not belong exclusively to organisations with large  budgets, formal qualifications or established positions. 

It should also recognise the people who build communities from the ground up. 

The DJs. 

The muralists. 

The musicians. 

The activists. 

The ravers. 

The punks. 

The community organisers. 

The self-taught artists. 

The outsiders. 

The people who never learned how to write a funding application but somehow managed to  bring hundreds of people together.

“GIVE THE UNDERDOGS A SEAT AT THE TABLE” Mark’s exhibition is ultimately a call for a broader definition of culture. 

He argues that some of Britain’s most influential cultural movements were created by people  without formal qualifications, institutional backing or access to traditional cultural structures. 

“Some of the most important people in British subculture never had a degree in  culture,” he says. 

“They had an idea. They had passion. They had determination. They had lived  experience. And they built something.” 

For Mark, a genuinely inclusive cultural future means making space for those voices  alongside established institutions. 

“Give the underdogs a seat at the table,” he says. 

AN EXHIBITION FOR PORTSMOUTH 

Southsea Cinema & Arts Centre is delighted to host The City of Subculture as part of its  continuing commitment to supporting independent artists, local cultural voices and  community-led creativity. 

The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to explore a very different side of Portsmouth’s  cultural history — one built through music, art, rebellion, community and lived experience. 

The preview event takes place at Southsea Cinema & Arts Centre at 7pm on  Wednesday 26 August. 

The exhibition will then run from 26 August to 5 September 2026. 

Visitors are invited to come, look around, start a conversation and perhaps reconsider what  they understand by the word “culture.” 

As Mark puts it: 

“Our culture isn’t something waiting to be created. It’s already here. It has been here  for generations. It’s just time we started listening to the people who created it.”