Kunsthall Stavanger is thrilled to announce the inauguration of our new garden, with artistic contributions by prominent Norwegian artists Lina Viste Grønli, Stine Janvin, and Tori Wrånas. The opening of the garden in October (date to be announced) of 2025 marks the 100 year anniversary of our building, and will provide the public with new artworks, landscaping, and universal access to the building.
Kunsthall Stavanger's building was inaugurated in 1925 as part of the Stavanger City Jubilee. Over the last century, parts of the garden have been removed to make way for roadworks, and the stately garden has been reduced to a grass lawn. We believe that the experience of viewing art begins before entering the gallery space, and so on the occasion of the 2025 Stavanger City Jubilee, we are rebuilding our garden into a space for viewing sculptures and performances, quiet contemplation and community gathering
Kunsthall Stavanger is thrilled to announce the inauguration of our new garden, with artistic contributions by prominent Norwegian artists Lina Viste Grønli, Stine Janvin, and Tori Wrånas. The opening of the garden in October (date to be announced) of 2025 marks the 100 year anniversary of our building, and will provide the public with new artworks, landscaping, and universal access to the building.
Kunsthall Stavanger's building was inaugurated in 1925 as part of the Stavanger City Jubilee. Over the last century, parts of the garden have been removed to make way for roadworks, and the stately garden has been reduced to a grass lawn. We believe that the experience of viewing art begins before entering the gallery space, and so on the occasion of the 2025 Stavanger City Jubilee, we are rebuilding our garden into a space for viewing sculptures and performances, quiet contemplation and community gathering. With our local community at the forefront, we are creating a beautiful, new outdoor space that will welcome visitors, safely accommodate children and young people, increase accessibility to our front entrance, and expand our artistic programming outside of the walls of our building.
Recognizing the increasing need for connection, as well as the overwhelming lack of public artworks of, by, and for women in the city, Kunsthall Stavanger has commissioned three prominent female Norwegian artists to creatively contribute to our new garden. The artistic installations in the garden draw on the history of the Kunsthall as well as look towards the next 100 years.
Stine Janvin, in collaboration with Cara Tolmie: The Tree of Life
Vocalist, performance and sound artist Stine Janvin works with the flexibility of the voice in relation to visual elements. Often inspired by electronic music, folk music and pop culture, Janvin creates audiovisual works and live performances in a wide variety of contexts. In March 2025, Janvin gave birth to twins. In a generous new performance and song work titled The Tree of Life, she will bury the twins’ placentas 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 for at least another 100 years, providing shade and fruit for visitors and artists alike.
Tori Wrånes: CATn DOG
Singer and visual artist Tori Wrånes works with voice, sculpture, installation and people, and is known for her immersive, dreamlike scenarios. Wrånas’ temporary 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. The work also abstractly reflects a fraught period in the Kunsthall’s history in which people were arguing “like cats and dogs” about the sale of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture Figure for Landscape, and reveals how art can become a starting point for both intense connection and debate.
Lina Viste Grønli: Peanuts for Barbara
Lina Viste Grønli had the opening exhibition at the newly founded Kunsthall Stavanger in 2013. The following year, after the sale of Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture Figure for Landscape, which had been previously installed in the Kunsthall’s garden, Viste Grønli proposed a new artwork as a tribute to Hepworth as the benefactor of the Kunsthall and the artists we are now able to support. We are now proud to commission Peanuts for Barbara, two smaller versions of the initial proposal that integrate with the Kunsthall’s redesigned entrance.
The peanut as a symbol contains a duality: Biologically the peanut is split into cotyledons; two halves contained within a single shell. In Western parts of the world, the term “peanuts” is used for something of low value. In other cultures peanuts, also called groundnuts, are associated with wealth and joy – most likely due to their ability to produce large quantities of edible seeds in small areas – and are often given as gifts during festivals and special occasions.
Viste Grønli has used this dual symbol of lack/abundance to create an homage to Hepworth, who gifted her sculpture to the Kunsthall for a low sum. However, the sale of the sculpture is partly responsible for the prosperity of the Kunsthall and the abundance of younger artists who have benefitted from her endowment. The placement of two sculptures representing peanuts in front of the entrance symbolize ongoing vitality and the continuing impact of Hepworth’s contribution.
Curators: Hanne Mugaas, with Heather Jones.
The garden is part of the City Anniversary: Stavanger 2025.
We would like to thank The City of Stavanger, Sparebankstiftelsen SR-bank, Sparebanken Vest, and Rogaland County for their invaluable support to the garden.
Vocalist, performance and sound artist Stine Janvin works with the flexibility of the voice in relation to visual elements. Specifically, Janvin focuses on elements such as costume and light, as well as the spatial properties of sound. Here she investigates how this can be used to channel the physical properties of sound, tangibility and sensory responses. Often inspired by electronic music, folk music and pop culture, Janvin creates audiovisual works and live performances for a wide range of different venues, such as theaters, clubs and galleries, and recently also websites and digital platforms.
Since spring 2021, she has been touring with the live project Echoic Choir, produced in collaboration with choreographer Ula Sickle. The project won the award at the Wiener Festwochen and has recently been presented at MACBA Barcelona, Mattatoio in Rome, the Venice Biennale's opening week and MUNCH in Oslo. Janvin has recently presented works at Performa Telethon and Issue Project Room, New York; Rokolectiv, Bucharest; Kunsthall Stavanger and MUNCH, as well as the work Chords for Calling presented at Deutschlandradio Kultur and Berliner Künstlerprogramm.
Tori Wrånes works with voice, sculpture, installation and people. Wrånes is a singer and visual artist and is known for her dreamlike scenarios in everything from small to gigantic productions. It can be above or below water. On a mountainside or in a ski resort.
Wrånes had her international breakthrough with the commissioned work YES NIX for the Performa 13 Biennale in New York, and has since delivered commissioned works all over the world, including for the Sydney Biennale (Australia), the Lagos Biennale (Nigeria) and the Thailand Biennale (Thailand). Her works include other shows at Sculpture Center NYC, Dhaka Art Foundation (Bangladesh) and Colombo Art Biennale (Sri Lanka), Shulamit Nazarian Gallery, Los Angeles to name a few. Tori Wrånes, alongside Klara Kristalova Benjamin Orlow, will represent the Nordic Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale.
Lina Viste Grønli is known for her multilayered, sometimes surreal and often humorous projects, where language and text in various forms are included as key elements. Grønli’s work mainly takes the form of sculptures, assemblages and can include both readymades, small-scale ephemeral sculptures as well as monumental installations in public spaces. She uses literary, art historical and popular cultural references in artworks that often consist of combinations of everyday objects such as books, clothing, watches, sneakers, stickers or packaging from grocery stores. Particularly characteristic are her sculptures built of bricks, often in combination with books cast into the wall. The brick sculptures can take the form of letters and familiar shapes, but in the context still absurd concepts and word combinations.
Grønli has exhibited at several major art institutions in Europe and the USA. She has produced public artworks for, among others, the UN Plaza in New York, the Norwegian Digital Agency in Leikanger and Munkerud School in Oslo. In 2021, Viste Grønli's monument to Kim Friele, Benkene til Kim, was installed at Vågsallmenningen in Bergen. The work consists of three benches shaped like the letters KIM, and was unveiled on the famous activist's 86th birthday, May 27. Lina Viste Grønli is a graduate of the Aarhus School of Art (1998–1999) and the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts (1999–2003). She lives and works in Sommerville, Massachusetts.
