Opening: Our New Garden

Kunsthall Stavanger inaugurates its new garden

Kunsthall Stavanger is delighted to announce the official opening of our new garden: a site for contemporary art and community gathering, featuring inaugural contributions by three leading Norwegian female artists: Stine Janvin, Lina Viste Grønli, and Tori Wrånes.

Stavanger’s 2025 Jubilee marked the 100th anniversary of the Kunsthall’s historic building, and we seized this moment to reimagine our outdoor space as a place for art, contemplation and gathering, together with new landscaping and improved universal access.

Designed with the local community at its heart, this multifunctional space welcomes visitors of all ages, improves accessibility to the entrance, ensures a safe and engaging environment for children and young people, and extends our artistic programme beyond the walls of the institution.

Conceived as a living programme rather than a fixed display, the garden will continue to evolve over time, hosting new commissions, and permanent and temporary projects by artists in response to this refreshed outdoor space on Madlaveien.

Opening Programme

From 6 June 2026

Stine Janvin, Nature Nurture, 2026

Vocalist, performance and sound artist Stine Janvin works with the flexibility of the voice in relation to visual and performative elements. Often inspired by electronic music, folk tradition and pop culture, she creates audiovisual works and live performances in a wide variety of contexts. In February 2025, Janvin gave birth to twins. In a new durational performance and song work titled Nature Nurture, she will bury the twins' placenta in the Kunsthall’s garden, on top of which she will plant a live apple tree. The performance is a sacrificial ritual that grants new life to the garden – a resurrection of what was once destroyed. The apple tree will grow alongside the city and the Kunsthall, providing shade and fruit for visitors and artists alike.

Tori Wrånes, CATn DOG, 2025

Singer and visual artist Tori Wrånes works with voice, sculpture, installation and people, and is known for her immersive, dreamlike scenarios. The artist’s sculpture, CATn DOG, portrays a bronze cat and dog lying on their sides looking at one another with a mixture of curiosity and animosity. Their tails have grown together and they are forever bound. The sculpture points to the complex relationships between two beings, be they animal, human, land, or planet, while also revealing how art can become a starting point for both intense connection and debate.

Lina Viste Grønli, On Balance (Alt i alt), 2026

Lina Viste Grønli’s work often takes the form of sculptures, assemblages and can include both readymades, small-scale ephemeral sculptures as well as monumental installations in public spaces. In this newly commissioned work for the Kunsthall, Grønli creates a meeting between a boulder sourced from the surrounding landscape and ordinary stainless steel spoons. The work operates within a field of semiosis, where meaning is not fixed but produced through displacement and association. Familiar objects are removed from their normal contexts, allowing new interpretations to surface. What do mundane objects like spoons and rocks mean when taken out of their usual settings, and what associations emerge when they are placed together? The contrasting material, scale, and use of these objects are set into equilibrium, a sculptural ‘balancing act’ that recalls zen gardens while remaining open to free association.