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Wanda Gillespie was born in Auckland, New Zealand and is now based in Melbourne, Australia. Gillespie works in installation, sculpture, photography, video and sound. Her work has been exhibited widely in artist run spaces, at the Contemporary Centre for Photography and the National Gallery of Australia.
Wanda’s work in general is based around the intersection between fiction and reality and in taking religious and spiritual ideas and grounding them in logic.
  Basing herself at Galerie Soemardja, Bandung, Wanda created a series of photographic works. During this time she also spent time at the Jatiwangi Arts Factory where she worked with local artisans to create sculptural works.
Wanda returned to Indonesia in April to participate in a performance art festival, Perfurbance #4. This festival was held in a village at the base of Mt Merapei and provided an opportunity for Wanda to collaborate with artists from across the region and around the world, and to experience traditional Javanese village life.
Wanda found the experience of being in Indonesia hugely rewarding. One of her main reasons for applying for an Asia Link residency was to experience life and work in a foreign environment. One of the most rewarding aspects was the relationships with other artists that she was able to form - relationships that she hopes will continue to reward both personally and artistically.
  The Impact of her time in Indonesia has been profound. As an artist it has opened her to working collaboratively.
She says "... prior to coming on the residency I would work alone, I had a studio on my own and was maybe a bit of a control freak - always had control of everything that I made. Then I came here and saw how people work together a lot more and was more open to collaboration and letting go of the things where I knew that I didn’t have the skills to create the way other people could. Kind of directing more and designing and being an ideas person and letting go of the fabrication"
I guess through the residency my work has developed in that I feel stronger about the direction that I am going in. I am more interested in doing more sculptural work and performance based photography”
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