Melanie Stidolph

Thank you Olga Smith – NUAcT Fellow – Fine Art, Newcastle University, for the invitation to attend the first Motherhood & Ecology workshops held at Edinburgh University.

Brilliant presentations from Olga, Kirsten Lloyd and D Ferrett.

This is the first of a series of workshops, devised with a view of fostering collaboration and joint research projects into themes and urgencies around capitalism, violence, and the feminine.

Looking forward to screening ‘The next dawn, the next spring’ on Saturday 7 June as part of the Promenade Weekender in Weston Super Mare! Thank you to Sam Francis of Super Collider for the invitation.

A great programme including Deep Listening with Simone Marconi, the Swamp Women of Weston Super Mare, experimental 16mm film programme and the RNLI Commissioned film, White Horses by Ivan Morrison.

Super Collider – ‘Uplifting people and places in Weston-super-Mare and North Somerset through culture and creativity’.

So pleased (and its such fantastic timing!) that I have been awarded an Arts Council England – Develop Your Creative Practice grant.

The funding will support me acquiring new skills in my practice to develop elements for the photo series ‘Last Summer’ and begin work on a new film project. I will be working with artist and curator Hannah Rose to explore future ambitions and further develop my studio at Porthmeor as a production and hosting space.

Huge thank yous to Hannah Rose for her access support to develop and write the application and to Anna Testar, Senior Curator, Hospital Rooms for her wonderful letter of support. 

📣 A huge thank you to @creativekernowassociates and @cove_park!

// We are delighted to announce that Melanie Stidolph has been selected for the first Creative Kernow Associates residency at Cove Park. Melanie will spend two weeks living and working on the 50-acre site overlooking Loch Long and the Firth of Clyde in March 2025, a period which marks the beginning of a year-long sabbatical to focus on her practice.

Melanie’s work is rooted in photography, exploring her relationship to grief and longing in relation to childlessness. Her photos pay attention to, and are in response to, slight changes of light, movement and the interaction of humans with the landscape. Recently her practice has expanded to incorporate working with others, and to bring the voice to the landscape as the trigger to change – literal and emotional. She is looking to start expanding this work on the voice during her time at Cove Park, developing scripts to bring an imaginative dimension to a practice that is built on a quiet observation of the real.//

This is a beautiful beginning to a year’s sabbatical to focus on my practice. 🙌 Can’t wait to be Lochside. 💙

Creative Kernow Associates

Cove Park

Thank you to Rosalyn Scott for the invitation to be part of her important online project In Other Words.

Featuring interviews with authors and poets who identify as either childless or childfree (as well as those who lie somewhere in between or prefer not to label themselves), we hear about their work, inspiration and lives. The discussions also cover the representation of non-parents in literature, and how childless or childfree writers and readers can be better represented by the wider publishing world.

Rosalyn runs the ‘NoMo’ book club – highlighting books that feature realistic narratives around this experience – find it on instagram here – NoMo Book Club. *NoMo is a term created by the childless advocate Jody Day in 2012 – it is used to describe anyone who identifies as a non-mother.

I’m in Group 4 of her interview series, with some wonderful and influential writers (Rosalyn has kindly stretched the definition to include my work and the photo book Endless Reproduction). Launches on 19 October online here – In Other Words.

🎨 MAC’s Symposium: Picturing The Unseen – Grief & labour in and out of motherhood

Thu 12 Sep 2024

This event addressed experiences of struggling to conceive, (in)fertility, being childless not by choice, maternal grief and caring for chronically ill children, as part of the Acts of Creation exhibition programme.

The day was developed with Sally Butcher and Hettie Judah, honoured to work with you both, thank you Hettie for the invitation. This day was partly inspired by the (M)otherhood: Art & Life event at Tate St Ives last year, supported and developed with The Paul Mellon Centre.

Speakers:

Elina Brotherus, Sally Butcher, Jessa Fairbrother, El Morgan, Trish Morrissey, Holly Slingsby, Helen Acklam, Sofie Layton, Louise Ashcroft, Buki Hannaway, Alexandrina Hemsley, Victoria Robinson, Hettie Judah.

There was power conjured up in the room. I was so moved, lifted and validated by the speakers and their work. This coming together, across life experiences, to acknowledge the whole, felt important, a marker. Thank you to our wonderful, warm audience who held, heard and shared.

Thank you to Roma Piotrowska, Chris and Deborah Kermode at MAC, Birmingham for giving unquestioned institutional support and making it all run so smoothly. Thank you to Sally and Hettie for this sensitive work, approached with compassion, expansive thinking and warmth and attention to the experience of others. Thank you to everyone who came and supported and shared at this event. It felt important, a marker in these conversations.

We missed you Dr Pragya Agarwal, but as Hettie said, we have your books, hope to see you soon. Looking forward to Hayley Frances summing up the day in poetry.

Proud of this commission made with the amazing Hospital Rooms team, patients and staff. There’s also a beautiful publication sharing all the work 📖💙, including an essay by Martin Holman and photographs by Oliver Udy.

Installation shots and video of the project by Rachael Jones shared at Newlyn & The Exchange gallery 9 August – 28 September 2024.

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Still, held, 2024 is a photographic installation created by Melanie Stidolph for the female lounge on Carbis Ward in Redruth. Hand-made paper flowers, created by service users, staff and members of the public with lived exper­ience of mental health services during workshops on the ward and at IntoBodmin, were thrown into the air and photographed using specialist equip­ment. The resulting images, showing the flowers coming together in mid-air, represent the gathering of people which surrounded their creation and which defines the room in which they are now installed.⁠
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‘I wanted to make a flower garden for service users that would adorn the walls of Carbis Ward and represent the time we spent together. The final photographs sit on a painted backdrop which softly fades from pink to blue, referencing Cornish skies. They show flowers suspended in mid-air and hands below – releasing, or ready to hold.’ – Melanie Stidolph⁠

For more info and images visit – Hospital Rooms