Photo credits: Ingrid Pop
Anchorhold
Exhibition with Melanie Stidolph at ALMA ArtSpace
May - June 2026
Anchorhold was a two person show with Melanie Stidolph at ALMA artspace in Newquay. The exhibition grew from a synchronicity of interests between the artists and in response to the architecture of ALMA, and brought together existing works and new pieces in conversation.
The installation draws inspiration from St Buriana of Cornwall and her voluntary enclosure as an Anchoress. The exhibition brings together Stidolph’s large-scale portraits on lightweight fabric with Coward’s delicate ceramic pieces that speak of utility and ceremony. The intervention to ALMA’s front window aligns these sites of separation and concentration with the studio / gallery.
Coward’s fragile works reference the practical hardware of the shoreline, shifting between utilitarian and symbolic offerings. These delicate ceramic pieces sit alongside the slippery draping of Stidolph’s printed fabrics, depicting characters in communion with the rocky edges of Cornwall’s coast.
Together they created an installation for ALMA artspace in response to research into sites of religious seclusion and the freedoms they might afford women, embodying the sanctity of the studio, aligning it with the religious space of the Anchorhold. These spaces of voluntary enclosure sat adjunct to places of worship, inhabited by an Anchorite or Anchoress with limited sightlines to the outside world.
You can listen to us talking about the exhibition on the Creative Field Notes radio show on Source FM here.
Notes on the exhibition:
At the moment in my work I am drawn to making impossible things out of clay. I enjoy the challenge of sculpting something that should be hard-wearing and reliable out of something that is the exact opposite. I love making work that sits in this kind of grey area, not quite one thing or another. The invitation to work with Mel on this exhibition at ALMA began as a conversation between ceramic and fabric; how my not-quite-hardware ceramic works could interact with/hold/secure Mel’s brilliantly slippery photographic prints.
What began as a mission to make fabric-specific hardware became a conversation between our two practices, with works being paired together in the gallery. Connections mostly implied rather than physical, ‘offerings’ placed in proximity to figures emerging from the Cornish landscape. Taking inspiration from St Buriana, an anchoress in Cornwall, enclosed on the site of St Buryan church.
I’ve been thinking about objects that we use to tether, to ground ourselves and other things around us. In an area surrounded by the detritus of the fishing industry, I’ve been thinking a lot about weights, cradles, tackle & nets. The new works that I’ve created for this show speak specifically to the banner of St. Buriana and the intertwined fisherman’s knots featured on it. Symbolically a fisherman’s knot signifies a tether to a loved one or a maritime life, but in these very delicate works they indicate another kind of tether, the choice made to enclose oneself in one location for a lifetime of solitude. This project has led to some brilliant conversations, and what feels like only the beginning of something much broader.
Last year I spent a lot of time in the studio, mostly with the blinds down, or open just enough to let in a little light. There are three ‘openings’ to my studio – a window onto the courtyard below, one onto Back Road West & a door to the same street. In summer & winter, I came early (all the better to park) and left in enough time to go home for tea. A year later & I’ve opened the blinds (though not always the window as it seems to be situated at the exact point where families fall out with each other on the way to / from the beach) as far as they will go. In April Lucy Ward & Ingrid Pop walked through the door and invited me to show at ALMA artspace in Newquay. I invited Rachael Coward & we started to look at what we might make.
Key words for Rachael included ‘Anchor’ which got me to a memory of ‘Anchorholds’ & then a search took us to St Buriana / Buryana of St Buryan in Cornwall. You can see a stone monument to her in the churchyard (marking her Anchorhold site) & banners & stained-glass that depict her cradling the church. The myths & legends (chased by a king, saved by St Piran & a cuckoo) are fascinating; imagination & solid stone holding a story that the village of St Buryan keeps alive, celebrating her feast day on the nearest Sunday to 13 May each year.
‘Anchorhold’ opened on 16 May, our occupation of the gallery included boarding up the window to create three access points, echoing the architecture of anchorholds: The Squint or Hagioscope allowed the occupant to follow the church service, the Parlour window – for communion with the outside world & the House window – to pass food in / waste out. Inside the gallery our works are paired with each other – including pieces from ongoing concerns & new works made in response to the Cornwall Anchoress – ‘Buriana’s knot’ by Rachael & ‘Accidental Anchoress’ by me; a portrait in character of Dr D Ferrett made with the support of brilliant photographer Neal Megaw on a stormy night.