Her photographic series Lost in Paradise, commissioned for Soho House Downtown Los Angeles, explores the visual language of cities where architecture communicates through neon signage, typography, colour, and layered urban surfaces.
Drawing on cinematic and noir-inspired photographic techniques, the works suggest fragments of narrative, inviting viewers to imagine what might be unfolding beyond the frame.
Her series Madam Mystery, first developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, reflects on a period marked by uncertainty and speculation about the future. Inspired by psychic storefronts and fortune-telling spaces, the works present imagined environments that evoke the human desire to seek meaning and guidance during times of the unknown.
Although Carey explores a range of spaces and places, a consistent thread throughout her practice is an interest in architectures of escapism — environments that sit between nostalgia and transformation, often capturing places that are disappearing, transitioning, or facing uncertain futures.
About Anna Carey
Anna Carey is an Australian artist based between Los Angeles and Australia whose practice spans photography, model making, and drawing. Working through memory and imagination, she constructs miniature architectural environments, which she then photographs. Carey began developing these works while growing up on the Gold Coast, a city that rapidly transformed as older beach shacks, motels, and vernacular coastal buildings disappeared through waves of redevelopment. What began as a reaction to the demolition of these modest seaside structures evolved into an ongoing investigation of familiar, dreamlike spaces of escapism, including motels, seaside holiday homes, psychic shops, and gem stores. Through the camera lens, these models are magnified, with all their imperfections, revealing the photograph as a constructed image that invites viewers into contemplative spaces drifting between reality and fiction, where memory, nostalgia, and daydreams intersect.
Carey completed a Bachelor of Visual Media with First Class Honours at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, and later received a Doctor of Visual Arts (DVA) from the same institution. She has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, including at Photo LA, Los Angeles; Artereal Gallery, Sydney; Andrew Baker Art Dealer, Brisbane; Dlux Media Arts at Federation Square, Melbourne; the Museum of Brisbane; and HOTA – Home of the Arts on the Gold Coast.
At HOTA, Carey created an immersive, large-scale architectural installation for the HOTA Children’s Gallery, expanding her miniature model-making practice into an experiential environment that invited audiences to physically enter and explore a dreamlike architectural world.
Carey has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Churchie National Emerging Art Award, the Queensland Regional Art Awards, and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award, where she received the Acquisition Prize. She was also awarded Highly Commended in the Sunshine Coast National Art Prize. Her work is held in major public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, HOTA Gallery (Gold Coast), the University of Queensland Art Museum, Caboolture Regional Art Gallery, and numerous private collections. [Official Website]
