Oakville Galleries is pleased to present a series of participatory workshops with Australian artist Stuart Ringholt as part of its spring exhibition The Talking Cure.
Combining deadpan earnestness with slapstick humor and a fascination with the absurd, artist Stuart Ringholt’s work takes many forms, from performance, video and sculpture to collaborative workshops. Ringholt explores mental illness, fear, and embarrassment by positioning himself and his participants in absurd situations and amateur self-help groups that he describes as “education through feeling.”
At Oakville Galleries, Ringholt presents Anger Workshops (2008–present), a participatory work in the form of a group-therapy session. Those in the group are invited to express their anger with, then their love for, each other. Ringholt has said about the work:
“Groups are offered the opportunity to lose inhibition and express their anger using voice and movement to the sound of very loud house music. This phase runs for five minutes. In the following phase, participants consider ‘love’ and express it using statements such as ‘I am sorry if I have hurt you’ and ‘I love and respect you’ to the gentle and soft sounds of Mozart. The group then gently embraces each other and hugs [for] another for three minutes. After the activity, the group sits and discusses their experience.”
Ringholt has presented these workshops in art venues around the world, including the 2008 Sydney Biennale and dOCUMENTA(13). At Oakville Galleries, the workshops will be held from Sunday 2 March to Wednesday 5 March 2014.
Stuart Ringholt was born in 1971 in Perth, Australia, and lives in Melbourne. He has had solo exhibitions at TCB, Melbourne (2011), and Club Laundromat, New York (2009). Ringholt has participated in group exhibitions and festivals such as MONA FOMA, Tasmania (2012), the Singapore Biennale (2011), the Biennale of Sydney (2008) and dOCUMENTA(13) (2012). He is the author of Hashish Psychosis: What It’s Like to Be Mentally Ill and Recover (2006).
Anger Workshops with Stuart Ringholt
Sunday 2 March to Wednesday 5 March 2014
Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square
Free
"For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we are stressed and angry we try to rid these feelings by putting them into someone else, but there is a better way. Attend a free 30-minute neuro-cardio workshop with artist Stuart Ringholt and learn simple techniques for expressing stress and anger in kinder ways. Each session will take place inside an enclosed room within the gallery space. For the shy or undecided a 5-minute introductory talk and demonstration will commence and explain the workshop. Suitable for people with a basic level of health and fitness. Adults only.
Sunday 2 March, 3:00 pm
Tuesday 4 March, 3:00 pm (held in the nude)
Tuesday 4 March, 6:00 pm
Wednesday 5 March, 3:00 pm
Wednesday 5 March, 6:00 pm
For more information or to RSVP (optional), contact angerworkshops@