Preface

In 1958 I arrived at the Art Gallery of New South Wales to be its first curator. Sydney’s best place for art books, the Notanda, was owned by the same Carl Plate whose 1950s colour-cubist paintings in the Art Gallery of New South Wales stood out among Australia’s best modern art. Soon, visiting Carl and Jocelyn’s house hidden on the Woronora River, one sensed ancient pagan metamorphosis among the rocks and trees, saw abstract transformations of nature in the studio, and was startled to encounter a drawing by the modern master Paul Klee. Fifty years later Plate’s work has held up far better than most of his contemporaries, and its particular character still seems highly localised in timeless beach and bush landscape. These hitherto unseen surrealist collages are a delightful surprise, but I hope they are a foretaste of something more. It’s time we saw a full reassessment of Carl Plate’s wonder-filled art. He freshens Sydney’s spirit of place.

Daniel Thomas


Taken from the catalog CARL PLATE, Collage, 1938-1976