Apparent Acquittal
Spiros Panigirakis

Spiros Panigirakis’ project at Gertrude Glasshouse staged studio production across the time of the exhibition and the artist’s residency at Gertrude Contemporary. The project had a closing reception on Saturday 27th July, after which point it moved to and continued at Gertrude Contemporary’s studio 9. The project’s starting point was the studio space of Titorelli, the fictional painter in Franz Kafka’s The Trial. A bed dominates the space of Titorelli’s studio and interrupts the thoroughfare to the adjoining court offices. Whilst the paintings encountered by the central protagonist and middle-manager Josef K in the studio represent portraits of judges and institutional allegories, underneath the painter’s bed is a series of near-identical landscape pictures.  

Spiros Panigirakis is an artist, educator and writer. Earlier in 2019, he presented Figures, notes and amendments, a public art commission in the suburb of Moorabbin and the city of Kingston.  In this project he mapped his parents’ suburban garden and investigated how planning controls and municipal administration frame this site. Other projects include Opening, 2016, for Support Materials, Soft Furnishings at RMIT Project Space; Moorabbin, 2014, for the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture; Australian Studies, 2014, with Fiona Macdonald for Cross Arts Projects, Sydney; Garden States, 2013, for Melbourne Now at the NGV and Ferntree Gully, 2011, for his first solo exhibition with Sarah Scout Presents. He recently co-curated If people powered radio: 40 years of 3CR, 2016, with Helen Hughes at Gertrude Contemporary and raft, 2013, at Craft Victoria. He has written for UN magazine, Enjoy journal and the practices of Raimundas Malašauskas, OSW, Fiona Macdonald, Fiona Abicare, Shannon Lyons and Bianca Hester. He was part of the founding committee of the artist-run initiative CLUBSproject (2002-2009). 

Spiros Panigirakis is a senior lecturer in the faculty of Art Design and Architecture at Monash University. He is the current chair of un Projects and is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne.