BELONGING
A Curatorial Essay on Anthony Carey’s Paintings
By Patricia Moriarty
Independent Art Curator and Educator
The urge to belong, to find one’s place in the world, to comfortably fit in one’s own skin is a shared human need. It’s what drives us to find our tribe, to navigate our life’s journey, to find our purpose and fulfil our destiny. It’s what binds us together and what drives us apart. Anthony Carey’s body of work Belonging explores this common ground. It searches out spaces where we can share our experiences of what it means to be part of a larger whole while maintaining the uniqueness of our selves. This is what motivates Carey to keep painting, the hope that his work will resonate with the viewer and that in this shared recognition a meaningful dialogue, indeed a kind of shared belonging will take place.
By his own admission his process could be seen to be haphazard in its approach and execution. His practice is almost entirely driven by instinct and a visceral relationship with materials. “There’s always a moment where I think I’ve wrecked it,” Carey admits. “But that’s usually when it gets interesting.” His work is partly sculptural, layering different media such as adhesive, plaster, paint and then carving the layers back using a variety of tools. He will often leave a piece and then come back to it weeks later. This approach echoes his search for an image to emerge almost by itself from the canvas. Often these layers will incorporate figures oscillating into being as if from fleeting memories of older encounters. As the nature of memory is one of the main themes of his work he excavates the archaeology of his emotions in an effort to find some consistency of being. Much of this effort is to assuage loss, grief and feelings of displacement within the context and content of his life experience.
The influence of Carl Jung and his theory of universal archetypes is woven through the fabric of Belonging. As Carey’s practice developed over time he recognised recurring motifs and themes in his work. Much of his output is created in an effort to come to terms with loss and grief and the constant urge to reclaim his place in his life. Jung proposed that archetypes are symbols and motifs that connect human experiences across cultures and time.
These archetypes seem to offer Carey not only a visual language but a symbolic vocabulary that resonates with what he is trying to achieve through his work. “I’m not thinking about archetypes when I paint,” he says. “... I’m trying to find something I didn’t know was there.” His use of these archetypes is not in any way heavy-handed or literal; rather, they exist as portals or guides to lost memories and emotions. They also operate as types of connectors between Carey and his audience providing a space where experiences can be shared. There is a kind of restorative communication, a reciprocal exchange without language. It’s as though these figures exist just outside of our consciousness while fully inhabiting it.
In the works The Ancestors and Under a Blood Red Sky we encounter archetypes such as the Shadow. In Beyond the Crossroads we behold the Self and the Great Mother. Lost in Translation and Red Embrace in Yellow Hues of Reflection introduce us to the Wanderer and the Threshold Guardian. But as Carey states “this psychological dimension enhances the emotional weight of the surfaces without needing deep theory”.
Many artists mine their lives for the subject matter and imagery of their art. Anthony Carey uses his art as a way to reconcile grief and loss as a means of going forward. The nature of his journey is one of searching for a direction and he invites us to join him on this quest. His process is as exploratory as this search for a place of meaning and resolution.
“We don’t experience life in complete narratives. Memory comes in flashes. Identity shifts over time. Belonging isn’t always a fixed place—it can be a state of reaching, of searching. That’s what I’m trying to hold space for in these paintings.”