As rainbow flags fill the streets for another Brighton Pride, an independent gallery in Kemptown is staging a quieter act of resistance.
Mid-Street Lab’s summer exhibition, Still, I Am Because You Are, opened on 26 July and runs through 10 August at 80 St George’s Road. The show brings together a sterling team of queer, trans, neurodivergent, disabled, racialised and working-class artists in what curators call “a community archive of queer process, not queer perfection.”
“It’s not just an art show, it’s a reclaiming,” said co-curator Pierre-Yves Monnerville, a Brighton-based artist and founder of the collective Unapologaytic©. “Too much of Pride is about optics now. This is about substance.”
The exhibition, co-curated by Monnerville alongside photographer Antony Edwards and illustrator Roseanna Sharville, draws its name from the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu: “I am because you are.” That emphasis on interdependence and mutual care is felt throughout the gallery.
Diverse Works, Unified Message
The show features Male Gaze, a painted swarm of masculine faces by queer disabled artist Sea Shucksmith, reflecting on trans identity and PTSD; Caroline Beavon’s Glitch, a digital installation that transforms social-media scrolling into a fragmented meditation on masking and rebellion; and No Man’s Land, a series of underwater portraits by guest artist Gil Mualem-Doron exploring themes of trust and shared authorship.
Other featured artists include David G. Taylor, whose digital works pay tribute to queer icons like Amanda Lepore, and Hannah Singleton, whose eerie clown portraits challenge neurotypical aesthetics through a self-defined “neuroqueering” practice.
Monnerville notes that the show is not just about identity, it’s about infrastructure. “We’re building a platform for those whose stories often don’t get heard. Pride should be about that too.”
A Cultural Incubator Without Corporate Backing
Since opening last year, Mid-Street Lab has emerged as a grassroots cultural hub. With no corporate sponsorship, the artist-led space has cultivated what organisers describe as “a rare sanctuary” for marginalised creatives, especially women (many of them working mothers), disabled artists, and increasingly, Black and Global South-descended voices often excluded or tokenised in mainstream cultural spaces.
To sustain its model, the gallery offers a Patron Membership programme, inviting community members to support local artists directly by funding workshops, purchasing prints, and attending events, not as consumers, but as collaborators.
A Counter-Narrative to Rainbow Capitalism
The exhibition arrives amid growing criticism of the commercialisation of Pride. While Brighton is often celebrated as a beacon of LGBTQ+ inclusion, many feel that deeper, more complex queer experiences are being sidelined.
“There’s a gap between what’s printed on the posters and what’s happening on the ground,” said Edwards. “This show holds space for the people who often fall through that gap.”
Rising hate crimes, limited accessibility at Pride events, and ongoing platforming of transphobia in public discourse only add urgency to the exhibition’s themes.
Critics and community advocates have praised the show as a necessary counter-narrative. By intentionally centering marginalised voices and rejecting performative allyship, Still, I Am Because You Are positions itself not only as an artistic project but as a political and emotional ecosystem.
Brighton’s Other Pride
As crowds gather for parades and parties, Mid-Street Lab offers something else: a moment of reflection, complexity, and connection. A place where being messy, vulnerable or radical isn’t just welcome: it’s the point.
Still, I Am Because You Are
Mid-Street Lab, 80 St George’s Road, Brighton BN2 1EF
26 July – 10 August | Open daily 12–5 p.m. (Closed Mondays)
Free entry | Artist talks and events throughout Pride weekend
www.midstreetlab.com
