Exhibitions
At Mjellby Art museum you will find shifting exhibitions of the Halmstad Group, a Swedish artist group with an important link to international cubism and surrealism. In addition, we exhibit temporary exhibitions with international and national modern art – often with a focus on gender, norm criticism and society. All of our exhibition texts are provided in English.
BIG WATER – Tori Wrånes
June 7th – November 2nd 2025
Above the surface: Thailand's tropical coast. Below the surface: Northern Norway's icy waters. In the immersive sound and video installation BIG WATER, these worlds merge and show fur-clad sea creatures living in harmony with nature and each other.
As visitors, we are invited to sit down on a multi-story, movable podium in the middle of the exhibition hall. The podium is surrounded by six film screens where the lives of the sea creatures unfold. The longer we look, the more we learn about their everyday lives and characteristics. They move seamlessly above and below the water's surface, playing their flutes in harmony with the fluctuations of the tides. Free from norms and limitations, they exist at one with the sea and move from one part of the world to the other – between vastly different seasons and geographical climates.
Tori Wrånes (b. 1978) is a Norwegian multidisciplinary artist and singer. She lives in Oslo and is one of Norway's most prominent artists. Before studying art, she was in a rock band for several years. This has left a clear mark on her artistry, where singing and sound are always central. Additionally, she freely mixes artistic expressions and likes to let sculpture, performance, film, movement, and music come together. With allusions to mythology and queer poetry, among other things, the dreamlike whole often forms an all-encompassing and highly surreal world of sound and imagery.
Wrånes has had several solo exhibitions and done commissioned work for art institutions around the world. Together with Klara Kristalova (SE) and Benjamin Orlow (FI), she has been selected as an exhibiting artist for the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2026. All footage in BIG WATER was filmed during Wrånes’s collaboration with the ILIOS Festival for New Music in Harstad, Norway, 2019 and the Thailand Biennale, Krabi, Thailand 2018–2019. The video installation was produced by Accelerator in Stockholm in 2022 and was most recently shown at HAM – Helsinki Art Museum.
Coast, Sea & Water – The Halmstad Group with Friends
June 7th 2025 – April 12th 2026
The coast of Halland with its special light and landscape has left its mark on many paintings. In Coast, Sea & Water – The Halmstad Group with Friends we encounter the coastal landscape through the brushstrokes of the Halmstad Group – alongside other artists who were connected to the group in various ways.
During the 1940s and 1950s, several members of the Halmstad Group developed a distinctive style of landscape painting, which found its starting point in the immediate environment around Halmstad. They focused on the coastline and its specific light, but also the fishing community and stonemasonry present in the area. Things that the sea washes ashore and common objects – rusty anchors, iron chains, ropes and nails – were elevated from everyday life and filled with meaning and symbolism. Transience, hope, and melancholy are present through depictions of the shifting seasons and a coastal landscape in constant change.
From the Collection: The Erik Olson Room
June 7th – November 2nd 2025
Mjellby Art Museum was founded in 1980 by Viveka Bosson (1930-2024), daughter of the Halmstad Group's Erik Olson (1901-1986). In 1997, the museum was donated to Halmstad municipality The donation documents state that a part of the museum should be dedicated to Erik Olson's artistry.
Viveka Bosson passed away in December 2024. In paying tribute to her fantastic contributions, a larger exhibition space is dedicated to Erik Olson this year.
The included works were selected with a focus on Erik’s production during the 1970s. At this time, he returns to a surrealist imagery, albeit with a greater spiritual intensity. Recurring themes are the sea, tides and flooding.
The majority of works on show belonged to Viveka’s private art collection. Her granddaughter Katharina Ekberg chose to deposit a large part of the collection at Mjellby Art Museum. We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to Katharina for her generosity.
From the Collection: Thea Ekström, in the Filing Cabinet
Ongoing
In 2023, Mjellby Art Museum received a large deposit of artworks by Thea Ekström (1920–1988), spanning the 1950s–1980s. Ekström was born in Söndrum just outside of Halmstad and had a long career as a musician before establishing herself as a visual artist. She drew inspiration from ancient typography, mythologies, and music.
In our filing cabinet in the library, you can see some of the last works Ekström made during the 1980s. At that time, she worked mainly with drawing using ink on paper. Abstract forms and her characteristic use of symbols dominate, but various vegetation and fantastical human figures also appear.
Ulla Wiggen – Passage
November 22nd 2025 – April 12th 2026
The critically acclaimed exhibition Passage presents the long-standing artistic career of Swedish artist Ulla Wiggen (b. 1942): from the early paintings of electronics in the 1960s to the recent depictions of human irises.
Wiggen approaches her subjects with calm realism, often using a subdued color palette. Her career is marked by distinct yet surprising transitions from one subject to another. Many of her works also feature various kinds of passages, where the viewer’s gaze focuses inward on the depicted subject and then back outward again. The relationship between the inner and the outer – both materially and spiritually – is central to her artistry.
In the late 1960s, the human subject as motif enters, first in the form of personal portraits, later through detailed depictions of internal organs. These Intra paintings are at the same time hyperrealistic and completely fictional – in a surrealist spirit. In the 2010s, Wiggen had her international breakthrough as she reached a wider audience with her Iris paintings.
The exhibition is curated and produced by EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern At. It was shown at EMMA in the autumn of 2024 and then traveled on to Västerås Art Museum. A version of the exhibition titled Outside / Inside was shown at The Fridericianum in Kassel in the spring of 2024.
Previous exhibitions
- The Halmstad Group
At Mjellby Art museum you will always find shifting exhibitions of the Halmstad Group