The Gutter Art of Stephen Varble:
Genderqueer Performance Art in the 1970s,
Photographs by Greg Day

ONE Archives Gallery & Museum, West Hollywood, California
1 March 2019 to 17 May 2019

The Horse Hospital, London, United Kingdom
26 October to 16 November 2019

Iceberg Projects, Chicago, Illinois
13 March to 18 April 2021

Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany
5 November 2021 to 18 April 2022

The exhibition brings to light the work of performance artist Stephen Varble (1946–1984) through the photographs taken by Greg Day (b.1944) of his costumes, performances, and collaborations. In costumes made from street trash, food waste, and stolen objects, Stephen Varble took to the streets of 1970s New York City to perform his “Gutter Art.” With disruption as his aim, he led uninvited costumed tours through the galleries of SoHo, occupied Fifth Avenue gutters, and burst into banks and boutiques in his gender-confounding ensembles. At the pinnacle moment of Varble’s public performances, the photographer Greg Day captured the inventiveness and energy of his genderqueer costume confrontations. Trained as an artist and anthropologist and with a keen eye for documenting ephemeral culture as it flourished, Day took hundreds of photographs of Varble’s trash couture, public performances, and events in 1975 and 1976. Varble understood the importance of photographers, and Day was his most important photographic collaborator. This exhibition brings together a selection of Day’s photographs of Varble performing his costume works and also includes Day’s photographs of Varble’s friends and collaborators such as Peter Hujar, Shibata Atsuko, Agosto Machado, and Warhol stars Jackie Curtis, Taylor Mead, and Mario Montez. The story of Varble told through Day’s photographs is both about their synergistic artistic friendship and about the queer networks and communities that made such an anti-institutional and genderqueer practice imaginable.

A satellite exhibition to David Getsy’s 2018 retrospective of Stephen Varble for the Leslie-Lohman Museum.

Online content
• “Photography and Genderqueer History: Greg Day in conversation with David J. Getsy on Photographing Stephen Varble and the 1970s,” 18 March 2021
• exhibition walkthrough of Iceberg Projects exhibition, recorded April 2021

Reviews and press
Philomena Epps, “The Trash Couture of Stephen Varble,” Frieze (14 November 2019)
Hannah Abel-Hirsch, “The Immersive Approach of Greg Day,” British Journal of Photography (17 December 2019)
Michael Valinsky, “A Forgotten Precursor of Genderqueer Performance Art,” Hyperallergic (4 May 2019)
Amy Patton, “A Look Behind ‘Rubbish and Dreams’” [interview with David Getsy] The Pride LA (10 April 2019)
Holly Warren, “One Man’s Trash: A Review of Stephen Varble at Iceberg Projects,” New City (31 March 2021)