89964 seconds [paces] of drawing [walking] 2014

RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Carey was selected as one of fourteen emerging Australian artists to present work at the SafARI exhibition curated by Liz Nowell and Christiane Keys-Statham. SafARI is part of the prominent Biennale of Sydney; it was created to enable international audiences to experience Sydney's alternative venues, and since then has become an important satellite event of the Biennale. Summer Hill, in Sydney's inner west, is home to the Summer Hill Flour Mill. Built in 1922, it is to become a residential and commercial precinct. Redevelopment starts in 2015. Before this happened, the curators of SafARI 2014 took the opportunity to commemorate the abandoned building and its past with site- specific artistic responses. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: For SafARI 2014, I undertook a two-week residency at the Summer Hill Flour Mill. I made excursions into the larger complex, responding to various spaces in a diverse variety of media. One of the most important parts of the work is the process itself, the time spent uncovering aspects and details of the site and considering how to represent or translate them. The outcomes produced, shown in a gallery space, provided a glimpse of time spent in physical homage to the building and its history, a remembrance of things past. Incorporated into these works are the actual physical, performative processes of their making, with the number of steps I climbed daily to the top of the building resulting in an 'endurance drawing'. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: This project was commissioned by the curators of SafARI 2014, a satellite event of the Sydney Biennale, Australia's biggest contemporary visual arts event. Other funding partners included: the Australia Council for the Arts; City of Sydney; and Arts NSW. The project was published in a catalogue (attached) and on many websites. Jo Higgins, 'SafARI14' ArtLink, vol 34, no 2, June 2014, described Carey's work as 'memorable', especially his 'large, obsessively rhythmic pencil drawings'.