Exhibition DateS
21 November - 24 December, 2026.
Exhibition Opening
Saturday 21 November, 2026, 3-5 pm.
Visual
Rating 100%
The Linden Projects Space can be accessed via an older lift that is not DDA compliant and requires staff operation. Our team is
always available to assist—please let us know if you need support during your visit.
In The Weight of Being, Wanda Gillespie examines the heaviness of what we collectively carry in contemporary times. The work explores how we bear personal, cultural and planetary weight, both physically and metaphorically, while the abacus marks an era of communal reckoning.
At the heart of the exhibition is the Newton’s Cradle, transformed from executive toy to devotional artefact. Constructed from walnut, its curved frame echoes cyclical forms and natural rhythms, drawing on the language of historic sacred architecture. The Cradle acts as a kind of karma calculator, through the balls rhythmic cause and effect, it offers a meditation on the unseen ripples of personal and global actions to the collective psyche.
This continues themes from Gillespie’s abacus sculptures, which reimagine tools of measurement as spiritual instruments. Together, the abacus and the Newton’s Cradle invite reflection on value, consequence and systems of thought.
In a new direction for the artist, a series of relief carvings in Huon pine presents self-portraits of the artist carrying her sculptures. Their style recalls ancient stone carving, sacred iconography and the Arts and Crafts movement. In one, the Newton’s Cradle is strapped to a hiking pack, its weight bending the figure forward as she braces to support it. In two others, a figure in profile bears the abacus in a ceremonial manner. Here carrying becomes a prayerful act, a gesture of compassion in which weight is held and offered.
A figurative sculpture of a woman carrying a child on her shoulders, and another of a hooded figure bearing weights, extend the theme, so that carrying and balancing become acts of devotion and care.
Watching over this dance are the Pilgrim and the Sage, wise presences who seem to manifest from unseen realms. Carved from local elm burl and adorned with hand-turned beads that nod to prayer beads, they appear as quiet observers.
Wanda Gillespie is a contemporary artist working in wood sculpture, installation, and public art. Her practice explores the
spiritual potency of physical matter, drawing on ancient tools, sacred geometry, and the harmonious patterns of nature to reflect on
value, time, and transformation. Wood is chosen for its energetic qualities, a conduit connecting to country or whenua. She is best
known for her carved abacus sculptures - both intimate and large-scale - which reimagine mathematical instruments as spiritual objects.
Her figurative woodcarvings blend detailed realism with mysticism, forming a distinctive language rooted in ritual, history, and the
metaphysical. Gillespie has held numerous solo exhibitions including The Kinetics of Thought (Melbourne Design Week), Of Counting and
Devotion (Craft Victoria), The Ministry for Mystical Reckoning (Stockroom), and Higher Thinking (Vivian Gallery). Her practice has been
supported by the Australia Council, Arts Victoria, Creative New Zealand, Auckland Council and the City of Melbourne. She has been awarded
numerous artist residencies locally and internationally including an Asialink residency in Indonesia, at the Cité Internationale des Arts,
Paris, France, and more locally at Bundanon and a recent 2 year residency at the Victorian Woodworkers Association in Naarm where much of
the works in this exhibition were created.