• Front Original c. 2000–2001 Mike Kelley World Art magazine GoCard promotional postcard, front, showing the magazine cover with a digitally composited colour image of a man's face with stylised pink antennae rising from his temples against a dramatic purple and blue clouded sky, with the masthead WORLD ART in large white outlined capitals at top and the text Mike Kelley / ON THE ALIENS AMONG US in white and pale green type at lower left.
  • Reverse of c. 2000–2001 Mike Kelley World Art magazine GoCard promotional postcard, showing the standard GoCard postcard reverse with WORLD ART in large black sans-serif capitals at upper left, the GoCard Postcard Advertising logo in red and black at upper right, four dotted address lines at right, and a subscription information block at lower left reading ART AND OTHER CULTURAL OBSESSIONS / COMICS • FILM • VIDEO • PHOTOGRAPHY / ELECTRONIC ART • PAINTING • SCULPTURE with telephone numbers and website addres
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The New Rare

Mike Kelley — On the Aliens Among Us, World Art Magazine GoCard, c. 2000–2001

Mike Kelley — On the Aliens Among Us, World Art Magazine GoCard, c. 2000–2001

£65.00 GBP
£65.00 GBP
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10.5 × 15 cm. Offset print on coated card stock. Published by World Art magazine and distributed through GoCard Nationwide Postcard Advertising. Very good vintage condition with light handling wear consistent with age and original distribution.

Original promotional postcard issued to advertise a feature on Mike Kelley in World Art magazine. Produced for free public distribution through the GoCard network — which placed advertising cards in cafés, bookstores, galleries, museums, cinemas, and other cultural venues throughout the United States — the card reproduces the magazine’s memorable cover featuring Kelley with stylised antennae beneath the title On the Aliens Among Us.

During this period, Kelley was at the height of his international recognition, producing works that explored memory, institutional critique, popular culture, psychology, conspiracy narratives, and science fiction. The extraterrestrial imagery reflects his long-standing fascination with the margins of belief and the ways popular myths reveal deeper cultural anxieties.

Although thousands of GoCards were originally distributed, very few were retained by collectors. Designed as disposable advertising, most were mailed, discarded, or simply left behind. Surviving examples in clean condition have gradually become collectible as records of the independent magazine culture that surrounded contemporary art around 2000. They occupy an interesting position somewhere between magazine promotion, graphic design, and artist ephemera.

Today the postcard functions as more than an advertisement. It documents an era when printed art magazines still shaped contemporary discourse through physical distribution, and when free promotional cards became portable extensions of exhibitions, publications, and artistic identities. For collectors of Mike Kelley, contemporary art publishing, or late-1990s and early-2000s printed ephemera, it represents a modest but increasingly uncommon document of that ecosystem.

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