Skip to content
Home/ Primetime Contemporary Art: Art by the Gala Committee as Seen on Melrose Place
Primetime Contemporary Art: Art by the Gala Committee as Seen on Melrose Place

Primetime Contemporary Art: Art by the Gala Committee as Seen on Melrose Place

by Chin, Mel
No customer reviews yet ISBN 9781737797975 Primary Information

A facsimile of the GALA Committee's mock auction catalog for an artistic intervention into the props and plots of Melrose Place

Originally published in a limited run in 1998, Primetime Contemporary Art documented In the Name of the Place, a radical two-year intervention by a group of artists, initiated by Mel Chin and known as the GALA Committee, on the primetime television show Melrose Place. This extremely rare artist's book is reproduced for the first time as a facsimile edition.
The artists comprising the GALA Committee worked with the producers of Melrose Place to develop a series of political works that were used as props and plot devices across two seasons of the show, providing surreptitious commentary on reproductive rights, HIV/AIDS, the Gulf War, domestic terrorism, corporate malfeasance and substance abuse. Some of these topics were banned by the FCC at the time, and the group's works allowed for the artists and the show to create political commentary that went unnoticed by censors. The artworks they produced were exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 1997 and then sold at an auction at Sotheby's to support several charities. Primetime Contemporary Art was created by Mel Chin and Helen Nagge as a mock auction catalog documenting the artwork made for the show and the conceptual framework of the GALA Committee.

About the author

Product details

BrandPrimary Information
Pub dateApr 4, 2023
ISBN-101737797976
ISBN-139781737797975
LanguageEnglish
Dimensions10.75 × 0.25 × 8.5 in
Weight0 lb
Last updated 2026-09-08 04:16
$14.16 $20.00 29% off
You save $5.84 · list price $20.00
In stock soon — order now to reserve your copy
Delivery by Monday, September 14, 2026
Qty
Sign in to Add to Saved list
Free delivery on orders over $35.
15-day returns. Any reason.
Secure checkout. We never store card details.

Readers who bought this also bought

More from Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - Group Shows
See all
[Re]imagining Science
Irmscher, Christoph
$8.62
Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present
Mixed Use, Manhattan: Photography and Related Practices, 1970s to the Present
$38.39
Climates. Habitats. Environments.
<b>Artists and writers go beyond disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to address the fight for environmental justice, uniting the Asia-Pacific vantage point with international discourse.</b> <p/>Modeling the curatorial as a method for uniting cultural production and science, <i>Climates. Habitats. Environments.</i> weaves together image and text to address the global climate crisis. Through exhibitions, artworks, and essays, artists and writers transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to bring their knowledge and experience to bear on the fight for environmental justice. In doing so, they draw on the rich cultural heritage of the Asia-Pacific, in conversation with international discourse, to demonstrate transdisciplinary solution-seeking. <p/>Experimental in form as well as in method, <i>Climates. Habitats. Environments.</i> features an inventive book design by mono.studio that puts word and image on equal footing, offering a multiplicity of media, interpretations, and manifestations of interdisciplinary research. For example, botanist Matthew Hall draws on Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i> to discuss human-plant interpenetration&#x3b; curator and writer Venus Lau considers how spectrality consumes--and is consumed--in animation and film, literature, music, and cuisine&#x3b; and critical theorist and filmmaker Elizabeth Povinelli proposes "Water Sense" as a geontological approach to "the question of our connected and differentiated existence," informed by the "ancestral catastrophe of colonialism." Artists excavate the natural and cultural DNA of indigo, lacquer, rattan, and mulberry&#x3b; works at the intersection of art, design, and architecture explore "The Posthuman City"&#x3b; an ongoing research project investigates the ecological urgencies of Pacific archipelagos. The works of art, the projects, and the majority of the texts featured in the book were commissioned by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore. <p/>Copublished with NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
$41.88
New Realisms: 1957-1962: Object Strategies Between Readymade and Spectacle
Available
$32.88
Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011
Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011
$18.98
Links: Australian Glass and the Pacific Northwest
Halper, Vicki
$62.67