let there be gwar: 40 years of blood, foam, and chaos on display in los angeles
Let there be Gwar: 40 years of blood, foam, and chaos on display in Los Angeles
Costumes, gore machines, tour relics, and 1:1 demon suits now part of a gallery show
To mark 40 years of absurdity, aggression, and arterial spray, GWAR is getting the gallery treatment. The exhibit, titled Let There Be GWAR, is now open at Beyond the Streets in Los Angeles through November 2. It’s a full-scale retrospective covering the band’s entire legacy—music, costumes, props, comics, videos, and enough foam and latex to make a haunted house look minimal.
The exhibit includes original costume pieces, hand-built stage decorations, early artwork, tour memorabilia, fan creations, and physical artifacts from the band’s long history of DIY world-building. There’s even one of the actual air compressors used to blast fake blood into crowds—a visceral reminder that GWAR shows weren’t just concerts. They were blood rituals with a pit.
Bob Gorman, a longtime member of the GWAR artist collective and the band’s de facto archivist, helped curate the show and saved many of the items now on display. “Early on, I decided to be our historian,” Gorman said. “This exhibit gets very detailed, yet stays broad enough for anyone to enjoy without getting into the weeds.”
The gallery includes work from Dave Brockie (aka Oderus Urungus), GWAR’s original frontman, who passed away in 2014, as well as fellow founding artist Hunter Jackson. The exhibit places their art side by side—not to smooth over tensions, but to show the creative friction that helped birth the GWAR mythos in the first place. “It’s a collision of ideas,” said current vocalist and former bassist Mike Bishop, now known as Blöthar.
The band also released a coffee table book titled Let There Be GWAR, now in its third printing and available at the gallery merch shop alongside limited edition prints and collectibles.
The opening weekend of the exhibit brought out everyone from Metallica’s Robert Trujillo to Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, who was cited as one of GWAR’s biggest early influences—more than KISS or Alice Cooper. “Devo never gave up the concept,” Bishop said. “That’s what we emulated.”
One fan, Anthony Mejia, drove two hours to attend the opening. “GWAR was the first group where I instantly felt like I fit in,” he said. “Comic books, sci-fi, horror, metal—it was all there.”
From demon suits to milk bottles to severed foam heads, the exhibit pulls from every era of the band’s weird, grotesque, self-built empire. It’s not curated for casual appreciation—it’s immersive. And for longtime fans, it’s confirmation that GWAR wasn’t just about shock. It was world-building with blood cannons and battle axes.
Let There Be GWAR is open now at Beyond the Streets, located at 434 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, CA. The show runs through November 2.
If your wardrobe already looks like a post-show cleanup crew for GWAR, you’ll fit in fine at DethNote Apparel.
Browse the collection or join the list for early access to gear built for misfits, blood freaks, and foam-wielding chaos lovers.