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.
