Melanie Stidolph

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

Still, held is through to the next selection stage for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It would be wonderful to show it in the context of the RA, wish me luck for the final judging in London at the end of May!

Still, held was taken in workshops with patients and staff at Camborne and Redruth Community Hospital and at the community resource, IntoBodmin. The photograph is part of a permanent installation of these works commissioned by Hospital Rooms in partnership with Cornwall Hospitals.

THE WAD – Photo credit: @folktographic Connor Lassey

Great to be collaborating with THE WAD – making wavers for their upcoming performances! The wavers will be my first outing under my alter ego – Dark Shining Wolf – the meanings of my given names.

THE WAD are a Falmouth-based Morris dancing side named after Joan the WAD, Queen of the Cornish Piskies. Cornish folklore suggests that Joan the WAD would light people to safety, or sometimes peril, across the Cornish moors.

The word ‘wad’ is often recorded as an old Cornish colloquial term for ’torch’ or bundle of straw. Joan the WAD is now seen as a good luck charm to many.

Increase your good fortune – Join THE WAD!

Open: Fri 13, Sat 14, Fri 20 and 21 March, 11-4pm (or by appointment)

Closing Event : Saturday 21 March, 4pm – late.

Featuring: Sovay Berriman, Benedict Davies, Kath Buckler, Naomi Frears, Leila Galloway, Georgia Gendall, Liam Jolly, Dean Knight, Patrick Lowry, Alice Mahoney, Jacqui Orly Ammon, Stuart Robinson, Melanie Stidolph, A Todd, Andy Webster.

Following part one of this project that began on St Piran’s Day as a one-day intervention in a charity shop on Redruth’s high street, the works have now been extracted where they will be re-presented at AH for the next two weeks.

Moving between contrasting systems of value and display, Second Hand explores how context shapes meaning – from the visual noise of a charity shop to the conventions of the gallery. By asking artists to present something existing, work with items in the shop, or make a light-touch intervention within this non-art space, the project invites new audiences to encounter contemporary art and follow it as it relocates to Auction House, making the act of extraction both visible and literal.

www.auctionhouseart.co.uk

Second Hand – Part 1

GONE TO THE DOGS – K9 CRUSADERS CHARITY SHOP

69 FORE ST, REDRUTH TR15 2AF

Great invite from Liam Jolly at Auction House to take part in a group exhibition with 15 artists which starts at a charity shop – Gone to the Dogs, Redruth on St Piran’s day – 7th March.

I’ll be showing new work – exploring scarves as a form with links to resistance, artist’s practice and as identifiers of community. Historical links to artists in Cornwall through the Ascher commissions, which featured a 1947 design by Barbara Hepworth, the proof for which is held at the Hepworth Wakefield. 🪡

The exhibition tests how the meaning of works shifts in different contexts and is part of a year long collaboration with Auction House, Back Lane West and CMR Project Space to change perceptions of contemporary art, making it more open and relevant for a wider audience. Part 2 will take place at Auction House over the two following weekends.Brilliant opportunity to work with new materials and forms of display in this unique place.🧵🎥🪨

Click link here for all artists and dates on Auction House website

Studio Newsletter – Imbolc 2026

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Telling stories through photography with Melanie Stidolph

Make It Better CIC

Wednesday 25th February 10.00 – 12.00

Borlase Smart room, Porthmeor Studios, St Ives

Join artist photographer Melanie Stidolph for this engaging and inspiring session where we will create shared stories through photography.

Melanie will guide us as we read and choose aspects of a narrative to respond to and seek out images that relate to this. Such as the story of Mr Ellis’s ship ‘Truelove’ – which was built from floorboards in 1906 and moved to the sea’s edge in Penzance (never to leave it).

We will then gather to share our photographs and findings, editing them together to form the group’s story. At the end of the session, we will present the whole story.

Bring your phone or camera or please let us know if you would like to use a tablet that we Mitber can provide.

Tickets (£5) available here: Eventbrite

Photo credit Morrab Library – thank you for your kind permission to reproduce.

In May last year I was invited by artist Alice Mahoney to document participatory walks around Camborne as part of her project Water Bodies. The project explores the relationships between water, landscape, and community.

The walks traced speculative water cycles, from streams and mermaid carvings to vanished holy wells and underground watercourses. As part of sharing the outcomes so far, my photographs and those by Annemarie Bala are on display with a new map of routes on The Ramp Wall at The Exchange, Penzance until 25 April 2026.

Further info: Newlyn Art Gallery

Thank you to everyone who came for the first Porthmeor & Trewarveneth Invites on 5th and 6th December.

A great weekend of visitors and visiting. Special thanks to Mandy Lee Jandrell for sharing the space with me and exhibiting her new work for the first time – excerpts from life and travels – printed on tracing paper and displayed overlapping on the studio wall, beautiful.

I showed new work – printing onto fabric and hanging in the space, will experiment more with this – enjoyed the ‘tender tension’ in my work becoming visible.

Click to play audio (recorded in studio) – of new written work in development –  reflective text / imaginary dialogue.

Begun on the shores of Loch Long and the plateaus of the Scottish hills during my Cove Park X Creative Kernow Associates residency in March this year.

This work draws on the texts A Stone Woman by AS Byatt and I dream of dead people by Rosalind Belben.