Melanie Stidolph

Image: Dark Shining Wolf X THE WAD wavers at Madron Holy Well

Dark Shining Wolf is my alter ego, formed from the meaning of my given names. Now with its own insta account @darkshiningwolf for news of collaborations, influences and inspiration.

Dark Shining Wolf X THE WAD is the first collaboration with the all female Morris dancing group THE WAD. Shown above is one of the made wavers for upcoming performances.

Dark Shining Wolf head and neck scarves for humans and their beasts are available from my online shop at the link below. Browse and shop in person at these brilliant cultural organisations in the South West:

• Tremenheere Sculpture Garden
• Falmouth Art Gallery
• Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange

Delighted that Dark Shining Wolf ‘artist squares’ have been selected for the following showcases:

• Present Makers, Thelma Hulbert Gallery, 7 Nov to 24 December
• Creative Kernow Associates X Make South West, Dec-Jan

melaniestidolph.com/shop

@darkshiningwolf

10 – 30 October

Opening night – 10 October, 6-8pm – all welcome

A work from my photo series Last Summer (2017 – ongoing), is included in Cornish Maids at Falmouth Art Gallery in October. Nearly 100 works by women made in Cornwall. Curated by Fran Rowse.

Fran Rowse is an award-winning Cornish photographer and curator; her work centres on the overlooked lives and stories of women and girls.

www.falmouthtowncouncil.co.uk/events/cornish-maids

🎪 This Saturday! 🌞

𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝕾𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖂𝖔𝖑𝖋 will be taking part in the Newlyn Art Gallery Summer Fair!

Saturday 29 August

11am to 5pm

FREE entry

Selling 𝕯𝖆𝖗𝖐 𝕾𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖂𝖔𝖑𝖋 artist squares – Treyarnon / Kennack Sands / Trenoweth 🦀

Purchases for whippets and their owners may attract a discount on the day.

Lots of lovely makers, musicians and food – including the 🐟 Cornish Sardine Festival Newlyn!

Thank you to artists Ali Bassett and Marianne Nicholls who run The Shop at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens.

First stockist in Cornwall for Dark Shining Wolf!

You can find them Tuesday- Sunday, 11-4pm at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens in Penzance.

Lots of beautiful things by artists and makers, pottery, jewellery, painting and, and, and…..

‘(Griselda) Pollock argues that the virtual feminist museum opens a different kind of time; not a timeline but a field of encounter. To be with ‘Anchorhold’ is to feel that field. What holds this together is not influence but resonance. These women have not passed something forward, one to the next; rather, we see a net, not a genealogy. Each node in tension with every other, across time and distance.’

Thank you to Dr Ella S Mills for her wonderful expanded reading of the context for the exhibition Anchorhold – Rachael Coward & Melanie Stidolph, at ALMA artspace, Newquay. This exhibition marks the beginning of an engagement with St Buriana of Cornwall and interpretations of her life as an Anchoress.

‘Julian of Norwich wrote from enclosure and became a point of contact for an entire community. The world reached her through her squint, in fragments, and she received it with extraordinary care. Stidolph and Coward are not enclosed in the same way; they are working, mobile and collaborative, making work in and from the world. But there is something anchoritic in the quality of attention this exhibition asks of us.’ 

Dr Ella S. Mills is an art historian, curator and artist mentor based in Devon, and together with Vashti Cassinelli founded Cassinelli Mills – ‘holistically supporting the legacies of artist-women and non-binary artists past, present and future’.

The full text is now live on the Art Cornwall website – thank you for the feature.

www.cassinellimills.com

www.alma-artspace.com

www.rachaelcoward.co.uk

Creative Field Notes – 16 June 2026

Thank you to Ceda Parkinson and Millie Burdett, poets, authors and wonderful interviewers of all things creative and Cornwall…

We have such a treat for you this week… listen in to our fascinating conversation with @melaniestidolph and @rachaelcoward as they talk about their shared exhibition ‘Anchorhold’ currently on display at @almaartspace until Tuesday 16th.

We’ll be covering the story of St Buriana, the true meaning of an ‘anchorhold’, what it is to consider yourself an artist in the current climate and invaluable advice to anyone looking to share their work for the first time.

Don’t miss out on our conversation with these two inspiring women, listen back to the Creative Field Notes episode from 13 June here ⚓️🌊✨

Photo: Left – Ceda Parkinson, Right – Millie Burdett

So pleased that ’Still, Held’ has been selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition!

I loved making this work with the staff and patients from Camborne and Redruth Community Hospitals and participants at IntoBodmin. The photograph is part of an installation at Camborne and Redruth Community Hospitals.

Cathy English from the hospital extended an invitation to Hospital Rooms and I was so proud to be selected as one of the 12 artists to work on the commission. Thank you for all the support from the Hospital Rooms team – the founders; Tim A Shaw, Niamh White and the Cornwall team; Anna Testar, Izzy Eastick and Stephanie Thomason.

It’s the 10th Anniversary of the amazing Hospital Rooms this year! Bravo them and all the artists and hospitals that work with them to transform mental health settings. 🌸

Big thank you to those that encouraged me to apply and to the selectors. ❤️🌟 🙏 Richard Paul @richardgpaul for safe delivery to RA!

Selectors:

Eileen Cooper / Michael Craig-Martin / Ryan Gander / Oona Grimes / Katherine Jones / Goshka Macuga / Humphrey Ocean / Peter St John

Dark Shining Wolf is a new venture from my alter ego – the title comes from the meaning of my given names.

Three designs – each featuring a still from 16mm films shot around the rocks, pools and quarries of Cornwall, part of an ongoing desire to regain a connection with nature after falling out with it.

Pre-orders for first shipping are open until 25 May. For humans and dogs (and any animals in-between), for heads and throats (particularly fine on the long necked whippet).

Thank you to CKA X Make South West – who have selected the pieces for the Make South West store later this year.

www.melaniestidolph.com

The Ladder, 2-4 Clinton Rd, Redruth, TR15 2QE

2 – 16 May

PV Friday 1 May

Looking forward to this show – selected film and photography in response to the theme of Mythopoesis – The imaginative transformation of the world through fiction, inspired by the work of artist and theorist Simon O’Sullivan.

Artists – Ingrid Pop, Wolfgang Dubieniec, Melanie Stidolph, Sam Merritt, Anna Jarai, Julian Micallef, Florence Bennett, Ollie Carr, Eve Diveney-Clegg & Ruby Ingleheart.

CURATED BY EYES PEELED X CINEMACLUB

www.instagram.com/theladder_rr/

Thank you to curators Olivia Reynolds and Julia Wirxel for the invitation to Family Crinkles, a group exhibition of artists from Berlin and Cornwall at the incredible Lobe Block in Berlin.

My film The next dawn, the next spring will be screened at the private view, and the dresses from the performance will hang in the beautiful brutalist space along with new works on fabric. They have also commissioned a flag, a still from The next dawn, the next spring for the top of the extraordinary building.

The exhibition ‘Family crinkles’ brings together contemporary artistic positions that understand family as a relational and performative structure. Based on Judith Butler’s understanding of social relationships as a performative practice, family structures appear here as fluid constellations that form in the field of tension between intimacy, dependence and power.  The works in painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation negotiate questions of origin, identity and electoral kinship and make family visible as a space that is characterised by vulnerability as well as resistance.

Lobeblock