“Award winning Berlin based artist Natascha Stellmach has acquired the ashes of Nirvana frontman, Kurt Cobain.”
Three months ago Kurt Cobain’s ashes were stolen from Courtney Love’s place. At the time it seemed as though the urn in which they were contained had been mistaken for something valuable by crooks who, no doubt, disposed of it when they realised it was full of ashen smackhead. But apparently not! No, according to a press release which arrived in my mail box today, the theft of the ashes was actually a bespoke crime, carried out for the good of conceptual art. Who’d have thought that the arms of the Berlin art scene extended into the LA underworld? Well they must do because German based Aussie creative Natascha Stellmach claims to have them. In fact, she has rolled Cobain’s dust into a spliff and promises to smoke it at the culmination of her exhibition Set Me Free at the Gallerie Wagner + Partner in Berlin. Wow, what a derivative combination of death, drugs and rock music, she’s clearly been thumbing heavily through the Wanker’s Book of Cliché and Tedium. I wonder what her next piece will be? Maybe a portrait of Bush with red buttons for eyes, or a vagina made of rubbish? Or maybe she’ll just crack out that missing Ian Curtis headstone and do coke off it at the Venice Biennale…
“This final act”, Stellmach says, “will release Cobain from the media circus and into the ether” (her statement of anti-media circusry slightly tarnished by the big-top of media clownishness that is her press release). This work, she hopes, will claim “an ephemeral place in the life story of the Grunge star”. Yes, for her, as yet another chump making money from a lonely junkie’s corpse.
Though Stellmach’s people are keen to point out that she is now one of “a number of artists to use human remains as a medium”, it, of course, doesn’t matter whether or not they are (they’re not) actually little flakey bits of Kurt. With art you see, much like with mother’s day, it’s the thought that counts. Unfortunately for Stellmach though, the ‘thought’ stinks worse than twenty year-old singed junky corpse that’s been kept in a casket beneath the LA sun.
As a meditation on suicide it’s a bit crap. Cobain’s death is compelling because it was both the most enormous of pop-culture events and a miserably private one. By publicly smoking the ‘joint’ (…with Cannabis! Boom! Take that 1960s family values! Another pie in the face from the art community!) she’s gleefully and momentarily edging into the spotlight he detested, without even thinking about the man. She’s pissing on his back whilst riding his coattails all the way to absolute mediocrity.
Obviously Stellmach can twist and turn through the intestines of irony to get out of any criticism of her art, but that wouldn’t make her look like any less of a dick for pretending to smoke a corpse.
PS: Ten years ago some teenage idiots told my flatmate they’d smoked the ashes of her dead friend Lee Citron from UK punks Stony Sleep. She thought it was lame and pompous at the time, it was. At least they, unlike Stellmach, weren’t thirty eight.
PPS: Remember when Keith Richards snorted his dad’s ashes without making a fuss? Now that’s a dignified way to get high on the dead.
ALEX MILLER
Reader Comments
September 30th, 2008
2:58 pm
fucking australians
September 30th, 2008
3:49 pm
Dont diss cobain, he was cool
September 30th, 2008
6:12 pm
lol wtf
September 30th, 2008
7:21 pm
why so angry alex? i have been there by coincidence. nothing is irony. this you two have in common ;-). but she is more poetic. she feels. you scream.
September 30th, 2008
7:39 pm
lol. I like the idea. anyone here who would like to smoke me? young japanese girls in school uniform?
September 30th, 2008
7:42 pm
what?? no legal action on c. love’s behalf??
September 30th, 2008
10:29 pm
why the fuck are we letting her get away with putting the ashes of an icon into a fucking spliff and light them???? its fucking disgraceful.
i fucking hope she asphyxiates because of them.
September 30th, 2008
10:31 pm
that’s going to be one shitty tasting joint, half-baked metaphor or not.
October 1st, 2008
1:09 am
nirvana were pretty fucking sweet
October 1st, 2008
1:23 am
thats fuckin gross. how is necrophillic ash worship art?
October 1st, 2008
3:43 am
how long before some asshole cross-breeds some kobain kush because of this garbage
October 1st, 2008
4:24 am
That is so corny.
It seems more and more that what it takes to be an artist is a total lack of imagination or understanding of what true creativity is.
Keith Richards snorted his dad’s ashes and didn’t place it in any context. It was him being him.
October 1st, 2008
5:01 am
You don’t get it! This is clearly a metaphor!
October 1st, 2008
8:47 am
Wow, an opinion.
October 1st, 2008
10:24 am
what a stupid whore.
October 1st, 2008
10:33 am
They do get it! Its clearly banal!
October 1st, 2008
1:36 pm
Isn’t she worried Courtney Love is going to come after her with an axe?
October 1st, 2008
7:40 pm
Fuckin whore, no respect
October 2nd, 2008
4:38 pm
I couldnt agree more, that artist is a fucking loser. No one will believe it and what’s more, I doubt anyone will care other than finding the whole thing extremely irritating.
This is the kind of ammo that builders read in the Sun and spit back out at anyone that mentions art.
October 2nd, 2008
4:40 pm
I’m going to smoke the artists ashes in an even more ironic turn.
October 2nd, 2008
4:43 pm
Hey, Star Wars, thanks for that dude, I’d almost missed it!
October 2nd, 2008
4:44 pm
Scrap that, actually, I meant to thank Taylor Gibbons…
October 2nd, 2008
4:45 pm
This woman is pathetic, attention seeker and trying very hard to be cool and get a reaction from the press.
If she cant do art fine but dont be such a bitch !
October 2nd, 2008
4:51 pm
Creative Aussie? Bollocks… no such thing
October 2nd, 2008
6:55 pm
why so many mentions of cobains heroin addiction? damn
October 2nd, 2008
7:09 pm
My grand dad put in his will that we flush his ashes down the toilet. We did.
October 2nd, 2008
7:10 pm
courtney love is gonna fuck that bitch right up
October 2nd, 2008
7:13 pm
at least give the guy some respect and roll a NICE joint with his ashes…fuckin wrinkly-ass lumpy thing
October 2nd, 2008
9:40 pm
“This final act”, Stellmach says, “will release Cobain from the media circus and into the ether”
What a pompous load of shite! Like so much of modern art it’s all just sensationalistic ego wanking!
Such a person has no morals and will do anything for fame. She’s deliberately started up the Cobain media circus expressly to get them to talk about her
…..And is probably reading this rubbing her hands in glea saying “all publicity is good publicity!” with a big gloaty smile on her face.
October 2nd, 2008
11:52 pm
What a dick this “artist” must be if she can think of nothing more original than this. i hope some fucker turns up and makes her look like the cunt she is.
October 3rd, 2008
12:24 am
who wrote this article?
would it be too much to ask that they take over the australian arm of this magazine and write everything that ever goes in it?
cos goddam this shit is good, and goddam im sick of seeing the australians say that putting plastic cups in fences for a clothing brand is a “revolutionary and groundbreaking new form of street art” etc etc
mind you they gave us nick cave so they cant all be bad. nick cave is not that good tho.
October 4th, 2008
4:42 am
This can’t be for real, surely, if it is she is one crazy bitch! Like seriously, when would this seem like a good idea… getting baked with ashes, no no mate, horrific plan.
October 5th, 2008
7:31 am
anyone seen the film “how high” ?
shes going to be tripping balls and talking to the ghost of kurt for days.
watch the film and you’ll know what im on about
October 5th, 2008
2:49 pm
fukin aussies.. good for nothing bunch of wankers..
October 8th, 2008
5:32 am
This is just more ‘pseudo art’ bullshit- which, unfortunately, undermines the entire point of art by spewing out a load of attention-grabbing bollocks.
October 9th, 2008
5:16 pm
pile of quivering wank.
October 10th, 2008
12:12 pm
whats a tight little bitch! pretetion beoynd levels i thought existed…