SAMANFØYNINGAR // HÅ GAMLE PRESTEGARD // May 24. - Aug 31.2025

SAMANFØYNINGAR
John K. Raustein
Aurora Passero
Elin Reboli Melberg
Magdalena Kotkowska
Løvaas & Wagle
Cato Løland
Håvard Kranstad

BGE Contemporary Art Projects // Soloshow // Sep 18 - Oct 23, 2024

Stitches unravel, flowers grow 

Elin Reboli Melberg is an artist who balances what is private, and at times brutally honest, with fearless social engagement. Throughout her career, she has explored different techniques, dwelling on that which allows a combination of spontaneous expression with focus and stamina.

Melberg was born in Stavanger (1976) and has a BA in Fine Art from Winchester School of Art, in addition to an MA in Fine Art from Royal College of Art, London. Today she lives and works in Stavanger and Oslo. For the last ten years she has focused on weaving, using plant-dyed and synthetically dyed yarn, new and inherited. She does her own plant-dying, using harvest from the woods and her garden. Several works have been acquired by Nasjonalmuseet, Equinor, Stavanger Kunstmuseum and Haugaland Kunstmuseum. In addition, she has made textile sculptures for the Sami exhibition «Vástádus eana - The Answer is Land», which won the award Kritikerprisen in 2022, and has been on a continuous tour of Europe, Canada and USA since 2021. Melberg refers to artists like Magdalena Abakanowicz and Synnøve Anker Aurdal as her main sources of inspiration, based on their ability to use traditional techniques like weaving to convey deep, personal experiences and political messages.

Melberg started working on this exhibition in autumn of 2023, but after a few months her mother was involved in a serious accident. This marks a clear divide in her production. The shock, as well the hope for a positive outcome while her mother was comatose, comes to life in «Etter før. Før etter» («After before. Before after»). The weave was underway when the accident occurred, and midway the colourful pattern is replaced by white yarn that remains unbattened, weightless and hesitant against the warp. Art has its own language, often more precise than the verbal language, and we can recognise the abrupt transition from everyday life to a total lack of control and predictability. Melberg continuously includes, as previously, her life in her art. Not as calculated effects and setting, but as slow, intuitive and unapologetic traces of an ongoing presence. She describes her time-consuming and repetitive work using tactile materials as a form of earthing. 

Three of the tapestries are based on the MR-scans of her mother’s brain, used by the doctors to explain the seriousness of the injuries. Melberg’s ability to work on what currently needs to be processed is extra evident when the topic is painful or confrontational. These works were created during an intense and secluded period, while her mother’s fate was unknown; the liminal phase. The dark, abstract piece «Så uendelig langt borte» («Eternally far away») as well as the woven tapestry «Våren har hull: Skogen» («The Spring has holes: The Forest») turn in on themselves, in recognition of her mother’s death, while the sculpture «Her er du mindre borte» («You are less away here») stands like an enveloping, but lifeless pillar. The light-coloured textiles were found while tidying her mother’s cupboards and include items varying from promotional T-shirts to unfinished embroideries. Then the floral motif takes over. Melberg writes in her Artist’s book about how she and her mother used to send each other photographs of the first flowers of spring, expecting lighter and warmer days. In the exhibition, the flowers are beautiful, yet serving as markers of the passing of time, thus reminding us of the ever-increasing distance. Nature gains a relentless, comforting and liberating role as it continues unaffected.

But now the spring has holes.

There are holes in the spring.
(Excerpt from Artist’s book, Elin Reboli Melberg, 2024) 

Chief honey monster #strikkeklubben // National Museum of Art // Oslo // 2023

Chief honey monster #strikkeklubben (2023) is now part of the National Museum of Art Collection <3

Ikke her. Ikke borte. (2022 - 23) // Deichman Bjørvika // Oslo // 2023 - 24

Ikke her. Ikke borte. (Not here. Not gone.) (2022 - 23) is on view at Deichman Bjørvika, Oslo, until February 2024.

Klag ikke under Stjernerne over Mangel paa lyse Punkter i dit Liv // FORMAT OSLO // Aug 10 - Sep 24, 2023

ELIN REBOLI MELBERG
Klag ikke under Stjernene over Mangel paa lyse Punkter i dit Liv 
(Do not complain under the stars about a lack of points of light in your life)

Elin Reboli Melberg often chooses time-consuming and detailed projects. One example is from 2011, when she built a room completely covered with mirror mosaics and glossy pictures. She has also often taken recourse in personal and challenging experiences, incorporating them into the creative process and allowing them to influence her materials, techniques and themes. When her father died in 2013, she embroidered his final text message to her in the work Elove (2014). Grieving took the form of a demanding and tactile work process that involved larger, softer and more nature-based materials than she had ever used before. During the pandemic the size of her textile works increased. Knitted works stretching from the ceiling to the floor, then flowing out across the floor, triggered a desire to be enveloped and protected. Many years ago, Melberg inherited one of her grandmother’s looms. She didn’t do anything with it for a long time, but with inspiration from Synnøve Anker Aurdal’s large exhibition at Astrup Fearnley Museum in 2022, the time finally came. While respecting traditions, Melberg wanted to retain the possibility to explore, experiment and make room for the imperfect, vulnerable and tactile aspects that also characterise her earlier works. She dyed yarn outdoors, using, among other things, plants from her own garden such as pine, rhubarb, tansy and lady’s mantle. In this exhibition one can find tension between the plant-dyed wool yarn and the brightly-coloured synthetic yarn. The exhibition title is an excerpt from the poem Mig Selv (Myself), written in 1841 by Henrik Wergeland.
 
Several artists, for instance Frida Hansen and Elisabeth Harr, have been significant for Melberg – initially as regards techniques, motifs and themes, and eventually also as ‘sisters in arms’. The works in the exhibition are once again marked by transformative experiences, this time relating to a whistleblowing case. In the winter of 2022–23, Melberg wrote a letter to the newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad in which she questioned an undemocratic political process that turned out to be in conflict with the rules of the EEA Agreement. Her published letter triggered a witch hunt on social media (SoMe) platforms: well-known control techniques were used to cast suspicion on Melberg and to degrade and ridicule her. After a new and democratic political process was implemented, it resulted in a different outcome. On one hand, this confirmed to Melberg that her reasons for reacting to the initial political process were valid, on the other hand, the attacks on SoMe increased.
 
When the harassment was at its most intense, Melberg gained support from the fighting spirit and social involvement of 20th-century Norwegian textile artists. She is deeply grateful to these artists, describing them as allowing her to ‘sit on their shoulders’, as it were, when they wove their political messages. In time-consuming and repetitive processes, there is also the opportunity for calmness, processing and healing. Memories become attached to the materials – for better and worse. Melberg, in this exhibition, takes ownership of the names she was called in the closed SoMe groups by using them as titles. She wants to shed light on how democracy becomes vulnerable when the possibility to point out injustice is threatened. Both locally and globally, the consequences for those who raise their voice can be so excruciating that they choose never to do it again. Observers from the sidelines are also dissuaded from speaking up. We see this when young, skilful politicians retreat from politics due to bullying and threats, and when whistleblowers in workplaces switch jobs or take sick leave. Melberg has demonstrated her political commitment for many years, both through her art and her participation in various committees and on boards, yet she has probably never been as personal as here. At the same time, this exhibition is about mechanisms that pervade power structures worldwide. Countries with democratic forms of government are in decline, and the consequences largely mark the news. The works on show can also have a strengthening and unifying function for others in similar situations. Melberg is in no doubt that she would whistleblow again, but the cost is high and support is vital.

The exhibition is supported by Arts Council Norway, Rogaland County, Stavanger Municipality and the Relief Fund for Visual Artists.
 
Mona Mørk
Art Historian

FESTSPILLENE I NORD-NORGE // TRUE NORTHERN ARTS FESTIVAL

Read more about it here: Å veve en festspillplakat

Konstellasjoner // Buer Gallery // 01.12 - 22.12.22

Group exhibition Konstellasjoner at Buer Gallery (Oslo) opens Thursday 1st of December 2022.

CRITIC´S CHOICE AWARD 2020 - 22

Elle Sofe Sara won the Critic´s Choice Award (2020 - 22) for the performance The Answer is Land, where I have made the set design. https://kritikerlaget.no/saker/dansekritikerprisen-2020-2022

With support from Norwegian Crafts and the Norwegian MFA’s Support Scheme for International Craft Projects

Enfolded (2020) goes into Stavanger Art Museums Collection (2021)

Photo: Ingun A. Mæhlum / Nordnorsk Art Museum

Elove (2014) goes into Stavanger Art Museums Collection (2020)

Photo: Bitmap