Art in Valentinlyst Health and Welfare Centre

Artists: Anita Abtahi; Brit Dyrnes og Arild Juul: ‘Alfhilds’; Erlend Leirdal: ‘Reise–Drøm–Minne’; Kari Elise Mobeck: ‘Ungdomskilden’; Merete Morgenstierne: ‘Bestefars Rom’; Eli Anne Tiller: ‘9 Kvadrater 2005’; Per Rune Vatne: ‘Lekende treskulpturer’; Vigdis Dagsdatter Øien: ‘Metamark’ 2005. Art consultants: Anne-Tove Huse & Urd Schjetne.

Valentinlyst Health and Welfare Centre offers an encounter with eight contemporary artists from the county. Outside the entrance hall, visitors are met by a turquoise metal sculpture, created by Vigdis Dagsdatter Øien. The sculpture is playful in its form and may tempt children to slide on it when they come to visit. In the welcoming and intimate garden space to the rear, Kari Elise Mobeck has executed the large-scale work of art titled ‘Ungdomskilden’ (‘The fountain of youth’), located on a vertical, curving terrace wall. Four high glass concrete reliefs have been placed on the wall at regular intervals. The reliefs are a representation of the organic course of life from seed, via germ and bud to flower. Life-giving water flows from three points in the wall and to a stone-formation in the ground.

Erlend Leirdal is another artist who has three-dimensional art at the nursing home. He has provided three large and heavy exterior sculptures made from solid oak. The origin of the sculptures, titled ‘Reise–Drøm–Minne’ (‘Journey–Dream–Memory’), is a 350-year-old oak from Åbenrå in Sønderjylland, Denmark. After the tree died, Leirdal secured the 6 m long, 8 tonne trunk. The trunk was transported to Trondheim and split into three parts, each measuring 2 m. The parts were subsequently worked on until their current appearance was achieved. They now nestle in their separate atrium courtyards.

Inside the building are displayed a long picture-on-the-wall series as well as individual pictures, both of which have been created by ceramic artist Brit Dyrnes. The themes are romantic and idyllic, evocative of the die-cut pictures collected in childhood. This picture genre is also the starting point for the public art project ‘Alfhilds’, a collaboration with photographer Arild Juul, and a particularly visible and striking feature of the entrance hall. A string of digital photographs have been joined and transferred onto either aluminium plates or glass, and adapted to their respective wall or window position.

The remaining indoor works of art have been allocated to various sections of the nursing home, behind open or more closed doors: Eli Anne Tiller’s paintings in the canteen, Anita Abtahi’s ceramic flower reliefs growing along the walls of the ward for patients with dementia, and Per Rune Vatne’s small tableaux containing wooden sticks that provide associations with the fictional character Knerten, a wooden twig and imaginary friend to a small child, depicted in several children’s stories by author Anne-Cath. Vestly.