For PAN readers wanting to relive their youthful punk days this is a great show at the newly opened Museum of Youth Culture in London.
‘Fifty years after Poly Styrene and a generation of pioneering women helped shape punk’s music, art and identity, the Museum of Youth Culture will collaborate on UP YOURS! GOD SAVE THE QUEENS, a landmark exhibition bringing together rare and previously unseen artwork, photography, fashion and personal archival material celebrating the women who transformed punk’s visual and cultural language.’
Show highlights include;
• The Poly Styrene Archive: personal material and ephemera including the Oh Bondage Up Yours! artwork draft, the Germfree Adolescents collage [and the original poster for X-Ray Spex’s legendary Roundhouse performance on 14 May 1978.
• Original artwork and archive ephemera by Linder.
• Archival fashion pieces and ephemera from The Zandra Rhodes Foundation, new and previously unseen paintings from Gina Birch (The Raincoats) including portraits of Poly Styrene and Ari Up.
• Original previously unseen artwork from Lora Logic (X-Ray Spex / Essential Logic), Caroline Coon: Between the Parades (1985), loaned from the personal collection of Chris Blackwell.
• Gaye Black: Gaye Black (Advert) Gaye Black’s tour trunk / suitcase from The Adverts tour with The Damned in 1976 with her tour postcards and other ephemera from her archive.
• Film archival materials from artist’s Sue Webster.
• Photography from Bob Gruen, Kate Simon and David Corio including rarely seen photographs and archival prints of Siouxsie Sioux, Chrissie Hynde, Ari Up, Judy Nylon and Rhoda Dakar.
• The Rock & Roll Public Library (RRPL): original press cuttings, magazines, posters, flyers, photography, artwork and original garments designed by Alex Michon and Krystyna Kolowska for The Clash.
The exhibition forms part of the inaugural UP YOURS! GOD SAVE THE QUEENS festival, a new London-wide programme running from July to November 2026.
The exhibition brings together rare archival material from significant music, fashion and cultural archives and collections, including the Poly Styrene Archive, the Zandra Rhodes Foundation and The Rock & Roll Public Library (RRPL). Alongside contemporary artworks, it presents previously unseen and rarely exhibited material drawn from the personal archives and collections of artists, musicians, designers and activists who helped shape punk, charting the movement’s origins, evolution and lasting cultural influence.
UP YOURS! GOD SAVE THE QUEENS
22 October– 22 November 2026
Museum of Youth Culture, Camden, London