Mel Stidolph: Shallows
September 25 to November 9, 1997
Organized by Kamloops Art Gallery Curator Andrew Hunter
Kitsilano Pool, Saturday, 6 June, 1997
black and white photographic print
40" x 40"
Shallows presents work from Mel Stidolph's past three years of photographic production. During
this period she concentrated almost exclusively on photographing swimming pools and bodies
underwater, producing images which emphasize the light/ liquid basis of the photographic
process. Shallows features crystal clear images of hotel and beach-front swimming pools and
grotesquely distorted forms of a female figure. This is Stidolph's first solo exhibition at a public
gallery and represents the culmination of two years of dialogue between the artist and I which
resulted in a group exhibition in Halifax and the publication of my short story Pool Side.
Monster, 1996
c-print
30" x 40"
At the most basic level, Mel Stidolph's photographs are simply documents of various pools in the
Vancouver area and a body floating in these same spaces. However, I believe there is much more
to the work than this. There is, for me, something sinister about Stidolph's images, and her chosen
title for the exhibition certainly reinforces this perception. The clean, brightly lit spaces of empty
pools read as crime scenes. The deformed figure or visage that hovers in the water suggests both
a predator and a victim (or perhaps a muted witness?). The creature presses ever so close to the
surface, up to but not breaking through the thin division between worlds. It lurks (menacingly?)
just beneath, in the Shallows, and calls forth memories.
Excess, 1995
c-print, black and white photographic print, foam-cre
60" x 48"
I remember when I was a kid, sitting in the rec-room of my parent's house, flipping through one of
the dozens of copies of National Geographic that were stacked on the book shelf next to the
chesterfield, a solid block of intense yellow. My favourite was a 1967 issue devoted to sharks.
There are two images that have stuck with me from this magazine. The first is a reproduction of a
painting showing a great white, using its head as a battering ram, smashing through the thin hull
of a wooden dory. The two fisherman are caught at that first moment of recognition and horror.
The caption told me that both were devoured. It is an excessive, overly dramatic image, a perfect
fit for my morbid, childhood curiosity. The second image is subtle but much more powerful: a
grainy colour photograph, shot through a telephoto lens, reveals, in the body of a cresting wave
off the coast of Florida, the shadowy form of a large shark, cruising just along the border of a
public swimming area marked by a line of red floats. It is a mysterious, threatening presence. The
photograph is weighed down with potential, the caption (unlike the description that accompanied
the painting) can only suggest a possible outcome. Will the predatory shark penetrate the safe
swimming area to feed or will it innocently drift along and back out to sea? Or, in fact, has the
photographer simply witnessed the presence of a creature as benign as a basking shark who drifts
along, toothless, feeding on filtered plankton? Gazing into the face of the creature that floats in
Stidolph's images, I am again confronted with such a range of possibilities and I wonder what is
the intention of this presence?
Andrew Hunter, Curator
July, 1997
Mel Stidolph was born in Hertfordshire, England. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from
the University of Leeds and recently completed the Master of Fine Art programme at the
University of British Columbia. She currently lives and works in Vancouver. Stidolph will be
present for the opening of the exhibition and artist's talk on September 25th. Shallows is
accompanied by a publication including an essay by curator, Andrew Hunter.
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