'...the display is leading visitors not only through two floors but also through different artistic terrains. The dichotomy hidden/revealed and a deceptive landscape seem to be present in works by Melanie Stidolph, Heather McDonough and Nadège Mériau....Visitors are stimulated to look for different narratives in single works as well as in the exhibition as a whole. The images may be linked or juxtaposed in many different ways: psychoanalysis, archetypes, story, the imaginary or voyeurism are only some of the issues which link the works of artists of various backgrounds and interests.'
- 'Photo Soup at Unit 24 Gallery', Agata Gajda, The Up Coming, 2012
'John Wyndham's 'Day of The Triffids', 1951, is taken by many to be an allegory of The Cold War. Thus whilst idealised images of the natural world are more often than not used by advertisers to connote health and well-being, mildly grotesque or deformed representations tend to symbolise deeper fears and axieties. The unsettling, triffid-like works in 'Curious Nature', curated by Lucy Day and Eliza Gluckman, largely belong to this latter category.
...Stidolph's work, both in the lower and upper galleries is not posed, but still has an understated poignancy.'
- 'Curious Nature', Rupert White, artcornwall.org, 2008
'For those interested in new British art, the likeability and lightness of the work here paints a picture of a scene where no-strings attached pleasure is the dish of the day.
... Melanie Stidolph's gorgeous photo of a toddler, haloed in sunlight, abandoning a swing and heading for us...Finally, there’s a second huge, graceful, yet vaguely threatening print by Melanie Stidolph, perhaps the best piece on display. This one is of a mare in a field looking down on its sleeping foal, with an expression that could be motherly love or pure menace, as if it just kicked its infant unconscious for misbehaving.'
- 'Lust and Found', James Westcott, Artnet, 2005
- Download
‘The tenor is aptly summed up by the title 'This Show is Ribbed For Her Pleasure' - an agile fusion of the sophomoric and hamfisted with the knowingly conceptual. Although much of the work engages with visible currents in the contemporary scene, the show is an illuminating introduction to a lineup of British artists who have staked out their own wry patch of land - imagine Rabelais with a post-ironic insecurity about what's even funny anymore.
... Other standouts in the show include Melanie Stidolph's large-scale digital (sic) photos... Stidolph’s picture of a white horse and its foal has a strange intensity (due in part to its ethereal, washed out color-scheme) that refuses to be immediately characterized as "doing" this or that. The sincere beauty of the photo counterbalances the My Little Pony irony of the subject matter.’
- ‘This show is ribbed for her pleasure’, Michael Paulson, NYArts Magazine, 2005
- Download
'Working spontaneously with a medium-format camera, and shooting hundreds of rolls of film, Stidolph pursues moments where people and places become quietly transformed into luminous, almost cinematic icons. Stidolph's photographs capture unguarded and expressive moments, deftly imbuing them with new meanings, making the mundane magical and investing the commonplace with emotion and feeling.'
- Concept for Living, 2005
'Melanie Stidolph attempts to spontaneously capture the unexpected drama of everyday life. In her last exhibition at the NGCA, she reflected the chaos of the domestic family environment, offering images of young children wreaking havoc in the home as they wandered in their own internal worlds.
This time, she has focused on non-human subjects, presenting photographs of the natural world that are simultaneously endearing and menacing. In one image, for example, a horse stands over a foal that could either be asleep or dead. Such is the ambiguity of the scene, the viewer is left unsure as to whether they are looking at a case of parental devotion or infanticide.'
- Melanie Stidolph, CC, Metro, 2005
'Melanie Stidolph's nature photographs and Samuel Herbert's deeply thought provoking paintings, redeemed the show - entirely.'
- When I Lived in Modern Times / Melanie Stidolph, Lauren Mulvee, www.tales of newcastle.net, 2005
While Halifax's marine culture at times feels fated for museum showcases and Celtic concerts, 'To a Watery Grave' at Saint Mary's University Art Gallery created a modern visual narrative from both historic and contemporary paintings, photographs, books, folk art and installations - all connected through the documentation of mass and personal marine disasters. Curated by Andrew Hunter, the show was inspired by graves of sailors in Prince Edward Island who died in the 1851 Yankee Gale tragedy. Accompanied by a seaworthy soundtrack, Watery Grave ably explored how sea stories develop into legends through works by Gu Xiong, Rockwell Kent, Edward Burtynsky and an extremely distrubing black and white triptych by Melanie Stidolph.
- 2006 Critics Pics, Akimblog, www.akimbo.biz