Welcome to Velferden and our big summer exhibition WASTE / DEPOSIT ! 

Opening June 6th at 11:00

Velferden and Jøssingfjord Science Museum

The artists in the exhibition are:

Anna Carin Hedberg

Ebba Moi

Hanna Sjöstrand

Linda Lamignan

Lisa Torell

Pierre Matte

Simon Daniel Tegnander Wenzel

Siri Austeen

Tove Kommedal

The exhibition opens on Saturday, June 6th at 11:00 with an opening speech on the steps by Mayor of Sokndal Municipality Bjørn-Inge Mydland. 

The day is filled with tours, performances and workshops and is suitable for people of all ages and for families.

There will be food and drink sales at Velferden's cafe.
The event is free.

We are very proud to present brand new artworks by 9 visual artists who have been at residency at Velferden the last 3 years.

The artists have worked closely with the landscape of Sokndal, and based on personal encounters with the large-scale natural interventions from mining. Since we started the program in 2023, they have had the opportunity to meet researchers, local residents and representatives from the mining industry who have helped to give them a rich and varied understanding of the situation here in the village. With lots of impressions and nuanced perspectives at the core, mixed with their own references and strong artistic practice, they have created works that constitute a complex exhibition on the theme WASTE / DEPOSIT . 

The exhibition consists of artistic expressions such as sound art, installation, painting, video, performance, sculpture and workshops. It is all shown indoors and outdoors at Sandbekk, and with a separate section in Jøssingfjord Science Museum. In addition to the artworks from our visual artists, we also have contributions from researchers and local experts in the exhibition. 

FREE BUS

For the opening day, we will set up a free bus with Veteranbussen Lynet. You can board from Egersund Station, Egersund city center or Hauge City Center. For those of you coming from Stavanger and Jæren, we have set up the bus times so that they match the local train from Stavanger. See times below: 

If you want to secure a seat on the bus, you must register using this form: Bus form

During the day we will also take a trip to Jøssingfjord Science Museum for those who want to see the artworks on display there. This does not require registration. 

To Velferden : 

Train: Stavanger - Egersund 08:53 - 10:05

Bus departure times: Egersund station 10:08 - Egersund city center 10:15 - Hauge city center 10:40 - Velferden 10:45

From Velferden :

Bus departure times: Velferden 15:30 - Hauge City Center 15:35 - Egersund City Center 16:05 - Egersund Station 16:10

Train: Egersund - Stavanger 16:19 - 17:30

Detailed programme for the day on Velferden coming soon!

WELCOME TO VELFERDEN THIS SUMMER!

About the theme WASTE / DEPOSIT : 

Waste is the worthless leftovers after valuable minerals have been separated from the rock in the mountain. This material—also referred to as tailings—is classified as waste and is stored in large deposits on land and in the sea. Tailing deposits or landfills are currently a necessary consequence of mining. In Sokndal, which is Norway's largest mining municipality, the landfills amounts to millions of tons of waste- an unresolved potential resting on the seabed and within the landscape. We live in a modern consumer society, and all the products we use contain minerals. Every form of mineral extraction produces large amounts of waste and pollution. If the disposal of tailings in nature is a problem, how can we begin to change the way we do things? 

At Velferden, we take a closer look at these issues and ask: How can we better manage the enormous amounts of waste we as a society generate? Are there other ways of managing resources that protect nature and make us more responsible consumers? How do these rapid interventions affect our relationship with nature as it is? 

The summer exhibition WASTE / DEPOSIT does not attempt to provide clear answers to these challenges, but opens up for reflection, experience and new perspectives.

Over the past three years, Velferden has been working with the theme AVGANG / DEPONI, and this summer we are hosting a full-day seminar. Join us for a rare opportunity to take part in an open dialogue, hear compelling presentations from experts within their fields and experience new artistic works.

TIME AND PLACE:

Jøssingfjord Science Museum,

Friday 5 June 2026 at 08:30 - 18:00. 

More about the day's programme further down the page

The seminar and transport are free!

Lunch and dinner are paid separately and can be selected on the registration form .

The seminar opens up new insights, unexpected encounters and reflections across disciplines, experiences and perspectives. We take as our starting point the major nature interventions in Sokndal, while at the same time looking outward towards the world. 

Are you interested in art, the environment, industry or social development – ​​or just curious about the topic? This is a unique opportunity to take part in an ongoing dialogue that can make a difference in the society we are all a part of. 

The seminar is part of Velferden’s summer exhibition, presented this year at Jøssingfjord Vitenmuseum and Velferden. By registering for the seminar, you will also be invited to an exclusive preview of the exhibition opening at Velferden on June 6. The preview is followed by dinner. See the registration form for more information. 

To attend the seminar you MUST fill out the registration form. We have approximately 40 seats available and registration will remain open until capacity is reached. 

Go to the registration form !

About the theme WASTE / DEPOSIT : 

Waste is the worthless leftovers after valuable minerals have been separated from the rock in the mountain. This material—also referred to as tailings—is classified as waste and is stored in large deposits on land and in the sea. Tailing deposits or landfills are currently a necessary consequence of mining. In Sokndal, which is Norway's largest mining municipality, the landfills amounts to millions of tons of waste- an unresolved potential resting on the seabed and within the landscape. We live in a modern consumer society, and all the products we use contain minerals. Every form of mineral extraction produces large amounts of waste and pollution. If the disposal of tailings in nature is a problem, how can we begin to change the way we do things? 

At Velferden, we take a closer look at these issues and ask: How can we better manage the enormous amounts of waste we as a society generate? Are there other ways of managing resources that protect nature and make us more responsible consumers? How do these rapid interventions affect our relationship with nature as it is?

THE SEMINAR: 

For the seminar, we have invited environmentalists, mining industry representatives, researchers, and artists to give presentations. The aim is not to produce simple answers, but to strengthen public dialogue and reflect on the complexity of these issues. We have divided the seminar into two parts; Problems and Potential:

PART 1: Issues

08:30 - 09:00 Registration, coffee and mingling

09:00 - 11:30:
Maiken Stene & Hans Edward Hammonds - Curators Departure / Landfill
Tonje Haugland Sørensen - Researcher in art history
Anne Katrine Lycke - Mining Committee of the Norwegian Association for the Protection of Nature
Knut Petter Netland - Project developer Titania a/s
Art and performance - Visual artist and participant Departure / Landfill

Group discussions in collaboration with the research project Material Ecologies of Design .

11:30 - 12:15
Lunch

PART 2: Potential

12:15 - 16:00

Maiken Stene & Hans Edward Hammonds - Curators Departure / Landfill
Egil Solheim - Managing Director NOAH / Rekefjord Stone
Pierre Matte - Visual artist and participant Departure / Landfill
Conservationist - Frederic Hauge, Bellona
Marie Storli - Social economist 

Group discussions in collaboration with the research project Material Ecologies of Design and summary.

16:00 - 17:00
Shared transport from Jøssingfjord Vitenmuseum to Velferden, including a guided exhibition tour

17:00
Dinner for registered participants

Go to the registration form!

Welcome to the last Velferden Presents of 2025: A christmas gather with music, food and artist presentation in the Director's house!

We invite you to a pleasant pre-Christmas gathering in the artist's residence in Sokndal: we light the fireplace, we serve sour cream porridge and mulled wine, and there will be live music.

Meet the artist duo Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu who are staying with us now in December!

VELFERDEN PRESENTS is a series of events where artists and researchers present themselves and their work, creating a space for joint dialogue.

Time and place:
The Director's house, Skogliveien 7
December 19th at 5:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Welcome!

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu (b. 1991, Iași/Timișoara, Romania) are an artist couple collaborating since 2012 and currently living and working in Sandnes, Rogaland. Their artistic practice transgresses multiple forms and formats, searching for meanings and methods to contextualize their existence within a broad political and cultural spectrum.

“With the occasion of our residency stay at Velferden, we are looking forward to making use of the offered time and solitude, developing our ongoing research and video practice, while being open for experimentation and interaction with the local environment and histories.”

We end the season with a summer gathering outside the Velferden building at Sandbeck!

We're betting on sunshine and good weather, and lighting the grill :)
It will be possible to buy barbecue food (Vipps)

(If the weather isn't perfect for grilling, we'll make a vegetarian stew instead and eat indoors)

Come hang out and get to know us and our artists better!

The artists in residence with us will have a presentation of their work:

VELFERDEN PRESENTS #04 / 25: Hedberg and Moi

Come to Velferden and meet the visual artists Anna Carin Hedberg and Ebba Moi, who are at residency with us in May.

VELFERDEN PRESENTS is a series of events where artists and researchers present themselves and their work, creating a space for joint dialogue.

Time and place: the Velferden-building at Sandbekk, May 26th at 5:00 PM

Welcome!

Anna Carin Hedberg and Ebba Moi participate in Velferden's programme WASTE / DEPOSIT and is working on a project that has been given the working title Sand Studies. In the project They investigate mining waste as a material, social and psychological resource. The project takes as its starting point the Sandbekk sand dump as a space for change, memory and co-creation. Through a local anchoring, the artists explore how what is left behind in the landscape can contribute to a collective exploratory process that contributes to a narrative about the area.

For VELFERDEN PRESENTS the artists will test out an interactive sand installation as part of the exploration for the exhibition to take place in 2026. They will also give an informal presentation about their thoughts and plans for the project.

Ebba Moi is a visual artist and works mainly within public space and socially engaged art. She is also part of the collective Tenthaus and a curator in various self-initiated projects and collaborations, in addition to being the chairwoman of Kunstnernes Hus. 

Anna Carin Hedberg is a visual artist, and her practice is about participation as a form of work and landscape based on social contact. In addition to her own art projects, she is currently involved in a practice-based research project at the National Museum in Oslo. A common denominator in their artistic collaboration is the concept of change. Changes that occur in landscape, language or in a material - over time.

VELFERDEN PRESENTS #03 / 25: Joss Allen

Come to Velferden and meet writer, researcher, gardener and art worker Joss Allen, who is on residency with us in collaboration with CAS - Contemporary Art Stavanger.

There will be light refreshments, and everyone is welcome. The event will be held in English.

VELFERDEN PRESENTS is a series of events where artists and researchers present themselves and their work, creating a space for joint dialogue.

Time and place: the Velferden-building at Sandbekk, April 28th at 6 pm.

Welcome!

Joss Allen (b. 1988, Scotland) can be found in the garden, amongst the weeds and compost heaps. He is an artworker and researcher interested in how art influences ecological ways of being and practices of care towards more-than-human worlds. Joss's work has been influenced by his time as a support worker for adults with autism, a labourer on an organic farm and a refuse collector, among others.

Between 2017 and 2020, they were the project coordinator for the Town is the Garden, a three-year creative community food-growing project run by Deveron Projects, Scotland. Recently, he was co-artistic director of ATLAS Arts, Isle of Skye with Yvonne Billimore. Joss is currently doing PhD research with a seed library in Glasgow.

VELFERDEN PRESENTS #02 / 25

We continue our series of conversations with the guests who are at residency at Velferden. 

Come to Velferden and meet author Tone Myklebust, dance artist Hanna A. Lokøy and visual artist Adelina Allberg, Monday March 17th at 6:00 PM.

Light refreshments will be served, and everyone is welcome. 

VELFERDEN PRESENTS is a series of events where artists and researchers present themselves and their work, creating a space for joint dialogue.

Time and place: the Velferden building at Sandbekk, March 17th at 6 pm.

Welcome!

Tone Myklebust (b. 1970) lives in Egersund, the neighboring town of Sokndal. She has a background in education and management, but has worked more or less full-time with writing since her writing studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tromsø. Myklebust has published three books to date: the fairytale book Gutten med Trollpikken (2017, Dreyer Bok), the short story collection Det stoppar ikkje her (2020, Cappelen Damm) and the short story collection Rutine ved varsling (2023, Cappelen Damm).

She is currently working on a novel project with the working title Den kvite dagen. Myklebust is particularly concerned with the fragile and broken nature of human life and with the idea that literature - and art in general - should be a place that can accommodate and make visible what we otherwise try to hide.

Hanna A. Lokøy (b. 2001, Stavanger) is a dancer and choreographer and lives in Copenhagen, where she recently graduated from the Danish School of Performing Arts.

About her residency at Velferden in the winter of 2025, Hanna writes: “The residency will encourage me to continue exploring my practice of crying, dramaturgy and the friction between them. I want to further develop my artistic interest in emotional movement, as well as explore new and relevant aspects of this through texts and choreography. I see this residency as an opportunity to research and let the practice unfold, while actively working with other relevant movement qualities such as shaking, stumbling, holding and collapsing. I want to investigate how this can be structured with dramaturgical tools and documented for future work.”

Adelina Allberg (b. 1999, Sweden) works with the collection of residual materials, whose properties are transformed and explored through recontextualization. She is interested in how industry seeps into ecology, and vice versa, and how this can be represented through material storytelling. She holds a bachelor's degree from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts (2024), lives and works in the countryside of Småland, and has participated in several exhibitions in Sweden and Norway.

On Valentine's Day, Friday, February 14, Sunbear releases their first album, "Catamaran". It's an album about love, flowing rivers and acceptance, about leaving your old iceberg behind. Or as Bruce Lee said: "Be like water"...

That same evening, Sunbear, in collaboration with Velferden, invites you to a release concert at Direktørboligen where they will play some songs from the album. It will be in trio format this time, with Hanna and Bjarke on vocals, keys and guitar, and Anders Maggaard who will come with his saxophone from Denmark.

Doors open at 7:00 PM
The concert starts at 8:00 PM

The address of Direktørboligen is Skogliveien 7, 4380 Hauge i Dalane. It is a large yellow/orange house and hard to miss.

There will be soft drinks and snacks, and free admission (donations welcome).

Here's a live video of a song from the album to warm up with

VELFERDEN PRESENTS #1 2025

We are starting the year by inviting you to a conversation with the guests who are currently on a production residency at Velferden. 

Come to Velferden and meet Emma Arnold & Qi Tan, Monday, February 10th at 6:00 p.m.

There will be light refreshments, and everyone is welcome. The event will be held in English. 

VELFERDEN PRESENTS is a series of events where artists and researchers present themselves and their work, creating a space for joint dialogue.

Time and place: the Velferden building at Sandbekk, February 10th at 6pm! Welcome!

Emma Arnold, PhD (b. Montréal, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and writer working at the intersection of art and environment. She leads the Institute for Art & Environment, an independent research platform conducting projects with environmental, social, and urban themes. She blends academic research with artistic practice and is concerned with how environmental crisis can be understood through art. Her current research focuses on contemporary art and extractivism in industrial and post-industrial landscapes.

Emma’s work centres on photography as an immersive and investigative tool for place- and sense-making. Inspired by the setting of Velferden and the presence of tailings and landfill sites, Emma will use this opportunity to research, write, and create in a place deeply affected by mining activities. Emma plans to explore the otherworldly landscape of Sokndal through image-making, publish an article drawing on this research, and develop a series of photographs, illustrations, and prints that reflect the area’s unique geology and history.

emmaarnold.org

Institute for Art & Environment

Qi Tan (b. 1994, China) is an artist based in Oslo. In her work, Qi delves into nature’s mystique and the imaginative potential of digital world-building, bringing extraordinary creatures and complex mythologies to life. A graduate of the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts, she has recently exhibited at Atelier Nord (Oslo), Forum Box (Helsinki), Galleri Ask (Horten), Tegnerforbundet (Oslo), Studio 17 (Stavanger), Bærum Kunsthall, Østlandsutstillingen 2023, and Høstutstillingen 2022.

Qi's goal is to create sculptural installations that respond directly to the residency’s surroundings, incorporating found materials and video projections.

qitan.no

THE SAND SCHOOL

During the first half of September, an unusual experiment will take place at Velferden , as six visual artists, namely —Siri Austeen, Stefan Schröder, Agnes Mohlin, Naomi Fisher, Maiken Stene and Hans Edward Hammonds— will study the material qualities of a 7 million ton pile of sand that we have laying around in our backyard at Velferden. The sand is called tailings, and is an accumulation of waste materials from the production of the white pigment titanium dioxide in Sokndal Municipality.

During the two-week workshop The Sand School; we will carry out physical experiments on the sand by making art with it, trying to make glass out of it, sculptures, extract sound and metals, and generally study its internal composition in conference with experts from the mineral industry, and through talk with locals - whose walking shoes regularly fill with sand. Together, we will engage in a process-oriented exploration of tailings as a material for art production and a metaphor for broader environmental and industrial issues.

PROGRAMME SATURDAY 14 SEPTEMBER:

09:30 - Bus departs Stavanger bus terminal to Velferden - (reserve a free place by contacting us at +47 984 79 704)

11:15 - 11:30 - Presentation by Maiken Stene and Hans Edward Hammonds

11:30 - 11:45 - Introduction to the exhibition 'Hidden Stone' by Marte Johnslien

11:45 - 12:30 - Lunch at Velferden - (available for purchase)

12:30 - 13:30 - Artists talks by participants at the Sand School: Siri Austeen, Stefan Schröder, Agnes Mohlin, Naomi Fisher, Maiken Stene and Hans Edward Hammonds

13:30 - 16:00 - Workshop in groups with field walks and performance by Marie Ronold Mathisen and John Derek Bishop

16:00 - Bus departure from Velferden to Stavanger - (reserve a free place by contacting us at +47 984 79 704)

18:00 - Arrival in Stavanger

After the two-week exploration, The Sand School join forces with Jøssingfjord Vitenmuseum and the research project NorWhite, and welcome you to Sokndal for a two-day programme with an international symposium, exhibitions, performance and artist presentations September 13-14! The programme will be conducted in English to accommodate our international guests.

Details of the entire two-day event

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KHALED HABEEB & JOHN DEREK BISHOP PLAY CONCERT AT VELFERDEN MARCH 13TH AT 7:00 PM

John Derek Bishop appeared on Velferden in November 2023 with Bishop & Breistein where he played alongside saxophonist Inge Weatherhead Breistein.

Now he's returning with Khaled Habeeb (oud), a duo that combines Arabic folk music with electronic music (live sampling). They play improvised tones with roots from traditional Arabic music combined with ambient and experimental electronic music.

They have performed at Victoria National Jazz Scene (Oslo), Punkt Festival (Kristiansand), Riksscenen (Oslo), Sølvberget (Stavanger) and Folken (Stavanger).

https://bishop.no/habeeb

On March 13th they will play with us at Velferden - Welcome to the concert!

Doors open at 1830.
Concert start 1900.
Tickets cost 50 kroner (Vipps) and can be purchased at the door.
We have coffee and tea.

COME to VELFERDEN for a very special experience!

The concert is supported by Kulturdirektoratet