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Margo Lewers, Abstract in Yellow,1960s FOUR GENERATIONS OF THE THE OF GENERATIONS FOUR LIVINGON THE FRONTIER A story of courage, tenacity and adventurous adventurous and tenacity courage, of story A creativity acrosscreativity fourgenerations LEWERS FAMILYLEWERS PART 1 PART cltr ead ees n asrc expressionist brother, abstract her and Margo and Gerald, Lewers. Margo Lewerspainter Gerald sculptor the prominent Australian of artists a previous generation, and Darani Tanyadaughtersof the as wellknown arealso Jon. husband architect-artist andher with exhibits collaborates who writer and architect printmaker, Darani’s younger sister Tanya decades. f ve Crothers spanning workis a of highly bodyrespected acclaimed an with

Margo Lewers, City Building, oil on masonite c.1959 (AGNSW) Lef: British Land Commissioner Bazett Hazzard and Adolf Gustav spat on in public. That same bitter wartime sentiment may Plate (in grass skirt) on the paved road to Robert Louis Stevenson’s also explain Adolf’s complete erasure from Australian art house in Samoa c.1894 history. South Pacifc from 1887 to 1900. He lived with islander communities on Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and on the remote Cassi Plate, daughter of Carl, was coordinating curator of island of Rotuma, speaking and writing in local languages A Restless Life, a 1997 retrospective of her grandfather’s and making enduring friendships. A self-taught artist, work at Penrith Regional Gallery. Her research culminated Adolf held his frst exhibition in Fiji at age 17. Adept at in the book Restless Spirits. She writes: ‘[Adolf’s] oils, pastels, drawing and photography, he was above all commitment to creating culture in Australia, his drive to a highly skilled watercolourist, particularly of landscapes. link the continent with its regional people and cultures and develop a cosmopolitan defnition of identity, On the advice of a good friend in Samoa, none other than was continued in the work of two of his children, the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, Adolf settled in modernist artists Carl Plate and Margo Lewers.’ in 1900 to make his reputation as a professional artist. He showed oils, watercolours and pen and ink In an interview with Hazel de Berg in 1962, Margo Lewers sketches of Pacifc island life in three exhibitions of the said: ‘I’ve always been interested in painting. My father prestigious Art Society of N.S.W.. He was soon considered was a painter. My brother Carl Plate is a painter. I suspect the equal of the leading artists of the day and invited to we all just inherited something from our father. As a small participate in the special Federal Art Exhibition in 1901. child I painted wild fowers and very much wanted to go His work was even included in the folio of watercolours to art school.’ presented to the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall at the ofcial celebrations of a new nation. ‘The house was always full of art’, Cassi Plate tells me. ‘I think for both [Margo and Carl] it was a way of remaining In 1903 Adolf married Elsie Gill Burton and they spent in touch with their father. It wasn’t until I was writing their honeymoon sightseeing and collecting native art the book that I realised that my father used to cross the Carl Plate, an important post-war abstract painter, were in German New Guinea. He supplemented his artist’s Pacifc in boats all the time. I thought ‘Oh my God, he’s ferce advocates for in a deeply conservative income as a travel writer, resuming his itinerant life, retracing Adolf’’.’ Australia. The Lewers’ house in Emu Plains became a sketching, painting, photographing and writing about popular meeting place for the close modernist arts circle visits to New Zealand, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, ‘It raises the question of how an arts tradition is seen in N.S.W. much like the Reeds’ Heide in Victoria. When Ceylon, China and Japan, contributing features under as a way of life’, says Darani Lewers when I ask about Margo died in 1978 her daughters gave the family home several pseudonyms to The Bulletin. In 1906, with tourism her grandfather’s infuence. ‘It’s something you take to Penrith City Council on behalf of the local community starting to boom in the Pacifc, he published two travel for granted. Even though our mother was incredibly as a heritage site and arts centre. It was opened as The books for cruise passengers of the giant German shipping entrepreneurial and very brave for her generation… I’m Lewers Bequest & Penrith Regional Gallery in 1981. frm, Norddeutchser Lloyd. sure that Adolf’s career as an artist would have been there in a subliminal way. And of course that same thing applies A generation earlier Carl and Margo’s father Adolf Plate In 1907 Adolf, Elsie and their frst son Max moved to Perth to Tanya and me, having two parents as artists.’ was a prolifc artist whose early death left only a shadowy where their daughter Margo was born in 1908 and her legend until his life and works were resurrected by his brother Carl in 1909. The following year Adolf edited and THE SECOND GENERATION: granddaughter Cassi Plate. Today the legacy lives on in a illustrated The Leeuwin, ’s frst monthly A HOUSE AT THE CITY’S EDGE fourth generation with conceptual artist Pia Larsen and magazine, which ran for six issues until its demise in 1911 With no family money to spare for art school fees, Carl sculptor and TV art director/production designer Aaron for lack of a cultured readership. and Margo Plate showed a tenacious determination Crothers. to lead an artist’s life. In the 1920s Margo worked at Adolf failed in his attempt at farming but his feel for several odd jobs—including as a cadet artist on the Julian Leatherdale spent an afternoon talking to Tanya the bush led to a prolifc period of Australian landscape Daily Telegraph—in order to buy a commercial ceramics Crothers and Darani Lewers about the history of this painting in Western Australia. In a catalogue essay in 1997, business, hand-decorating pottery to her own designs exceptional family and their own commitment to Jacqui Strecker likens Adolf’s watercolours of gum trees preserving and curating the family’s legacy. A story of to Hans Heysen’s while his paintings reveal ‘his delight in courage, tenacity and adventurous creativity across four the instinctive beauty of colour and considerable skills as Above: Carl Plate, Journey 1971-74 (Carl Plate Estate) generations, it is told in two parts in this and the next a colourist’. She suggests it may have been on trips to issue of Oz Arts. Right: Europe between 1905 and 1907 that Adolf encountered Adolf Plate, Vakiora, Motusa, Feb. 6 1900, the pointillist technique of the French modernists evident oil on cardboard 30x32 cm, portrait of an island THE FIRST GENERATION: RESTLESS WANDERINGS in several works. princess afer death, Rotuma (Penrith Regional Apprenticed to the German merchant marine at age Gallery & Te Lewers Bequest, gif of Jocelyn Plate) 13, Adolf Gustav Plate would leave behind a trunk of Soon after the family’s return to Sydney, Adolf died paintings, sketches, photos and writings as a record of suddenly at age 40 in early 1914. As the widow of a Cassi Plate has noted the similarities seen his thirteen years’ travels as sailor and later trader in the German, Elsie would later be accused of being a spy and here in the work of Carl and his father. 18 Adolf Plate, Untitled (Heath with Mallee Gum, WA), c.1912, and taking night classes with the painter Antonio Datillo- watercolour, 15.1x19.7 cm (Penrith Regional Gallery and The Rubbo. Carl’s work in advertising supported his part-time Lewers Bequest) studies at East Sydney Technical College before he left on the customary study tour abroad. Adolf Plate, Untitled (Banana Plant in Light), c.1898, watercolour, 17x17 cm (Penrith Regional Gallery and The Lewers Bequest) At Datillo-Rubbo’s studio in Rowe Street, Margo met fellow student Gerald Lewers who had grown up on Sydney’s North Shore with a childhood passion for the bush and wood-carving. In 1926 Gerald joined Farley and Lewers, a family quarry and construction frm established with his brother and brother-in-law. He continued to fnd time for art studies at East Sydney Tech, the Rowe Street fertile ideas for his own artistic vision and bearing a torch studio and even a short course in Vienna. for British and international modernism.

Gerald and Margo married and in 1934 headed of to In July 1934, Gerald Lewers won critical acclaim with his study in London. Thanks to Gerald’s brother-in-law Arthur machine-inspired sculptures including the wellknown Wheen, Librarian at the Victoria and Albert Museum The Plough, for the Six Colonial Artists exhibition in and a generous mentor, they saw the latest modernist London. Back at home, he returned to work at Farley and exhibitions and met art critic Herbert Read, painter Ben Lewers but continued to sculpt part-time through the Nicholson and sculptor . 1940s and to participate in group exhibitions. On an artistic odyssey through the United States, Mexico, His expressive animal pieces in wood and stone (such Europe, Scandinavia and Russia from 1935 to 1940, Margo’s as Camel’s Head, Tortoise, Hippo, Pelican Birdbath) won brother Carl Plate was also mentored by Arthur during his period of study at art schools in London. The 1936 Top: Carl Plate, Two Levels, collage 1974 (Carl Plate Estate) Surrealist Exhibition in London left a deep impression as photo Silversalt did meetings with Read, Hepworth, Nicholson, T.S. Eliot Gerald Lewers working at Emu Plains on sandstone Reclining and . Plate returned home in 1940 with Figure for University House, ANU, 1953

20 him praise by critics and contemporaries as the leading sculptor of a new generation. Sculptor and friend Margel Hinder observed that his ‘love and understanding for the wood and stone of his own land, coupled with his sensitivity for the inner life of wild animals and birds, carried out with his assured craftsmanship, led to some of his fnest and most distinguished works’.

Impressed by Bauhaus-inspired interior design she had seen in Germany on their six-week trip through Europe, Margo returned to Sydney to promote her own designs in ceramics and fabrics. The Women’s Weekly visited her Sussex Street studio in January 1935 calling Margo ‘clever’ and ‘one of those daring woman who wear occasionally black lacquered nails’. She held an art gallery exhibition later that year and in 1936 opened an interior design shop, Notanda Gallery, on Opposite top: Rowe Street. Here she sold hand-printed linens, natural Ancher House western courtyard, late 1960s wood furniture and hand-painted pots, all made to her Downpipe in copper, front verandah Ancher House, own design, as well as pottery sent by Carl from Mexico. Darani Lewers c.1964 Despite the good press, these fashions were far ahead Gerald Lewers, Pelican Birdbath, sandstone, 1947 (Penrith Regional Gallery and The Lewers Bequest) of the general public’s taste and her main customers remained Australian architects who had been overseas. This page top: Gerald Lewers, Swans in Flight, Theaden Hancock Wartime restrictions closed Margo’s shop in 1939 but Fountain University House, ANU c.1961 the following year her brother Carl re-opened a new Lewers’ house courtyard, 1981 Notanda Gallery two doors up as a gallery to exhibit

Left: Gerald and Margo Lewers on the The garden became an important shared project for boat to London in 1934 Margo and Gerald over many years and a daily labour of love for the nocturnal painter Margo. This striking Opposite page: and original modernist garden, which included desert Top: Margo Lewers supervising installa- succulents, won several awards during Margo’s lifetime. tion of Expansion at the Canberra Rex Hotel 1960 What appeared accidental and disordered was artfully Below: Margo Lewers, Expansion (1960) planned. Engaging all the senses in a total experience, after conservation, Canberra Rex Hotel the garden was composed of distinct areas, featuring 2010, photo Tim Wheeler river boulders, sunken pools, fountains and sculptures with radiating patterns of layered vegetation, shrubs modernist artists, beginning and trees, all connected by subtle vistas and pathways. with England Today featuring work by 32 contemporary artists The detailed integration of house and garden, interior including Hepworth, Nicholson and exterior, expressed the Lewers’ modernist ethos of and Eric Gill. Carl continued to run the wholeness of one’s art and life. Darani points out Notanda Gallery as Sydney’s only that the work Gerald and Margo did there on a domestic source of contemporary art books, scale was the genesis of their later largescale public postcards and reproduction prints commissions for gardens, sculptures, fountains and until its closure in 1973 to make mosaic murals. way for the MLC development. The Lewers’ house was a convivial, stimulating meeting ‘The Notanda Gallery was critical to the spread of place, famous for its exuberant parties where everything, modernism in Sydney’, says Cassi Plate. ‘Everybody even the presentation of the food, was a work of art. was no defning line even though we were brought up foor and wall mosaics and Mondrian-style cork-tiled came to read the latest art magazines [Carl] subscribed ‘Because it was a small community, all the arts… the quite strictly.’ Both girls boarded at Frensham private cupboards. Tanya and Jon, a fellow architecture student to, literary and poetry as well.’ Gerald, Margo and Carl writers, poets, musicians and visual artists, were friends girls school in Mittagong but spent their holidays at at Sydney University, helped Margo with the complex were founding and active members of the Sydney and met together’, says Tanya. ‘Margo was always Emu Plains. staining of the cupboards. Margo was never shy about branch of the Contemporary Art Society and exhibited interested in meeting people’, adds Darani. Through recruiting family, friends and visitors to work in the in their exhibitions. Margo’s connections on the British Council, performers ‘We spent a lot of time with our parents’, says Tanya. In garden or on the house. In 1964 she asked Darani to from visiting theatre companies were invited and artists an essay she wrote for a Margo Lewers retrospective in design a sculptural copper downpipe for the Ancher While Gerald travelled for work and sculpted part- she met on her 1958 trip through Asia were also made 2000, she recalls her mother’s respect for their opinions House in the same spirit as the one her father had made time, Margo dedicated herself to raising her two young welcome. The arts world made its way to Emu Plains. as young adults. ‘She welcomed our criticisms of her for the garden in 1957. daughters, Darani born in 1936 and Tanya in 1941. Margo paintings and, trusting our visual understanding, took on parenting with her characteristic rigour and ‘Ideas hurtled, argument fared, voices shouted, sparks frequently acted upon them.’ In 1951 Gerald became a founding treasurer and later intelligence, researching the educational philosophy few. The house on the Nepean… provided one of President of the Society of Sculptors and Associates, of A.S. Neill, founder of the Summerhill School. Tanya the focal points of our still tentative civilisation’, said From 1945 to 1950 Margo restarted her artistic career, showing work in all their exhibitions. The Society recalls her mother as a disciplinarian who expected Patrick White in an oft-quoted reminiscence. Among studying with Hungarian artist , whose successfully lobbied architects and a string of important rules to be obeyed but ‘encouraged her daughters to be the regular visitors was Gerald’s niece Sonia Farley open-minded approach allowed a rules-free exploration public art commissions followed, with Dr H.C. Coombs, confdent and active’. (1927-1997) who carved with her uncle and went on to of colour, space and form and encouraged students to Governor of the Reserve Bank, as a prominent champion become a distinguished woodworker in her own right. branch out into diferent media, a practice Margo would of public art. In 1942 Gerald purchased a former pig farm—a A substantial collection of her work was donated to the take up later with textiles, mosaics and sculptures. farmhouse and ten acres—by the Nepean River as Penrith Regional Gallery in 2010. A masterful and intuitive carver in wood and stone, weekday bachelor accommodation while he was When she commissioned architect Sydney Ancher to Gerald began experimenting with copper in the 1950s away at work. When he retired to become a full-time ‘Because [my parents] were part of the modernist ethos extend the original house in 1955 and build a separate as trends in public sculpture changed. He undertook sculptor in 1950, Gerald relocated his family there from and they brought us up within that spirit, we made dwelling, the Ancher House in 1961, she again designed commissions for 15 major public works including the Cremorne. Emu Plains was rural, mostly orchards and friends with everyone’, says Darani. ‘We were always all the interiors and detailing. These included elaborate monumental Reclining Figure at University House, ANU, market gardens. The near treeless property was exposed part of the parties and gatherings of the artists. There to westerly winds and extremes of hot and cold and the 45 year-old farmhouse was primitive.

The readjustment was a shock for Margo but she set to work creating a garden and redesigning the house to make it comfortable. With a strong colour scheme for each room, she brought her craft skills, artist’s eye and minute attention to every detail of the interior design from dyeing cushion covers to hand-painting venetian blinds. 24 1953 and abstract and semi-abstract copper fountains, Margo’s stature grew as her paintings evolved from an Rex hotel in 1960 and a mosaic mural for the lobby of She began painting again in 1965. The Ancher House, notably for ICI, , 1958, the John Christie early geometric constructivism to a more fuid abstract the Engineering School Building at the University of intended for Margo’s mother ‘Gilly’ Plate but sadly not Wright Memorial, Macquarie Place, Sydney 1960, and expressionism. By 1960, she had won three art prizes, Western Australia in 1961. fnished before she died, hosted a Carl Plate exhibition the Swans In Flight, University House, ANU, 1961. had three paintings purchased by the Art Gallery that same year. In 1968 Dr H.C. Coombs commissioned of NSW (AGNSW) and had work selected for the SS In August 1962 Gerald was killed in a horse-riding Margo to produce a painting as the basis for a tapestry for Margo and Gerald exhibited together at the David Jones Orcades travelling exhibition and Fifteen Contemporary accident. Margo was devastated but chose to stay on at the Reserve Bank boardroom to be woven at Aubusson, gallery in Sydney in 1952 and 1956 and at the Peter Bray Australian Painters in London. Emu Plains. ‘I am still here because so many of my friends France. Margo’s painting style evolved again through in Melbourne in 1952. In 1957 they worked on a joint were not prepared to associate the Lewers with any the 1960s and, in the 1970s, her tireless reinvention commission for a contemporary landscaped garden With her restless and ever fexible creativity, Margo other locality.’ With no formal training in sculpture but saw her experiment with plexiglass sculptures and for the MLC Building in North Sydney. When Gerald turned her interest in colour and composition to mosaics. with help from her daughter Darani, Margo took over fabric wall-hangings. By the end of her career she had Lewers was chosen to join an ofcial cultural delegation Self-taught, she graduated from the domestic works responsibility for two of Gerald’s major commissions: held 22 solo exhibitions, won 14 art prizes and was to China in 1956, Margo organised her own trip two at Emu Plains to two largescale public commissions: a war memorial fountain in Gosford for which Margo represented in private and public collections all over years later, travelling to Singapore, Malaya, Cambodia, the huge mosaic mural Expansion (2.3 m x 12.3 m) designed a mosaic and a wall-mounted copper Australia and abroad. Thailand, Japan, and, as a woman alone, to China. on the Northbourne Avenue façade of the Canberra sculpture for the lobby of the Reserve Bank in Canberra. Like the Lewers on the Nepean River at Emu Plains, Margo’s brother Carl Plate had found a place on the edge of the city to create while keeping in touch with the larger world of art. In 1945 he married artist Jocelyn Zander and made his permanent home by the Woronora River to Sydney’s south. Here, his output as a painter was formidable, rooted in his love of the bush and views from his studio, and evolving into abstraction that explored, to use his own words, ‘other dimensions’ beyond the material world.

By the late 1950s and 60s Plate’s paintings placed him in the vanguard of Australian abstract art, winning multiple prizes, with solo exhibitions in nearly every capital city in Australia as well as London and New York. A passionate Francophile, Carl was drawn back to Europe again and again where he worked in Spain, Greece, London and Paris. Less wellknown but equally striking are his collages. A late period of this work, made during long sea voyages and during his fnal stay in Paris, were unusual rippled ‘optical efect’ collages, curated by his daughter Cassi and exhibited for the frst time in 2009.

Carl died in May 1977 and Margo only a few months later in February 1978. A week after talking with the Lewers sisters, I visited the AGNSW. As I admired Carl Plate’s Up (1962) and Margo Lewers’ Translucent (c.1952), sharing the same room among the modernist works on permanent display in the Australian galleries, I refected on the courage and self-belief it took for the children of self-taught artist Adolf to be here.

THE LEWERS LEGACY: A WORK IN PROGRESS When Margo Lewers died in 1978 the bequest of her property, which included the site, the buildings, the garden and a substantial art collection, had not been resolved. It fell to her daughters to ensure her wishes were fulflled and took a grassroots campaign by the local community and concerned regional artists to persuade Penrith City Council to establish a gallery. In August 1981 The Lewers Bequest & Penrith Regional Gallery was opened by Premier Neville Wran. 27 Margo Lewers, Wide Penetration, tapestry, Reserve Bank, Sydney 1968 Since it opened the gallery has had a successful record kept up friendships with families from that generation of exhibitions, workshops and educational programs of artists. that have engaged the community including several modernist exhibitions about the Lewers and their While Margo Lewers was the subject of a major contemporaries and drawing on the collection. retrospective at the National Trust’s S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney in 2002, Tanya and Darani believe a major But there have been changes that cause the sisters retrospective of Gerald’s work is long overdue. There concern. From 2004 to 2006 a restructure dissolved the has been nothing since the memorial exhibition at the board on which they sat for 25 years and transferred AGNSW in 1963 apart from a combined Gerald and the gallery’s administration to a new corporate entity, Margo Lewers exhibition at the opening of the Penrith Penrith Performing and Visual Arts (PPVA) Limited, Regional Gallery in 1981. Darani has been tracking down which also manages the Joan Sutherland Performing work in private and public collections for an exhibition Arts Centre, the Q Theatre Company and the Penrith in 2015 that will include work by Gerald. Conservatorium of Music. Tanya and Darani’s commitment to preserving their ‘The problem is when you put together a small visual parents’ legacy is inexhaustible and ongoing. In 2002 arts gallery with a very large performing arts centre, a public campaign saved the Canberra Rex hotel from which has opera, theatre and music, [the centre] needs far more resources’, says Darani, a former trustee of the Powerhouse Museum for nine years and a Chair of the Australia Council Crafts Board for three. ‘Exhibitions and stage performances are at opposite ends of the arts spectrum. As a heritage site, the gallery has a responsibility to explore its modernist origins. [That] requires specialist staf ‘We always saw the gallery as having a and services. It needs an dual role’, explains Darani. As a regional independent board to care gallery it would show contemporary for and develop its dual role.’ visual arts by local artists but also bring new work into the region from interstate Both Tanya and Darani feel and abroad. As such, it would become their parent’s legacy has not a model for other regional galleries in been fully understood or used Australia. Its other role—given the site’s to advantage. Tanya tells me history, heritage buildings and garden, that Penrith City Council has and collection of works by the Lewers placed the gallery, including and their contemporaries—was as a the gardens and the Ancher resource for preserving, researching and House, on their local heritage understanding Australian modernism. list but has rejected repeated calls for listing on the State Heritage Register despite redevelopment but the threat prompted the Lewers nominations by the Royal Australian Institute of sisters to seek ACT Heritage listing for Margo’s 1960 Top: Carl Plate, Homage to Cousteau, Paris Architects and the National Trust. Darani points out that mosaic mural Expansion. In 2008 the hotel changed Multiple Collage 16’, 1975 (Newcastle Art state listing would unlock extra funds and make expert hands and the following year Darani and the new Gallery) photo Silversalt advice available. hotel owner jointly applied for a heritage grant so that Left: Gerald Lewers, Fountain, copper, ICI urgently needed conservation work could start in 2010. Building, Melbourne 1958 The sisters are disappointed their expertise is no longer Opposite: Sculpture, Reserve Bank Canberra valued. They have both exhibited widely as artists and To spread the word of this success story, Darani, 1964, copper, fabricated from fullscale they sat on the gallery board for two and half decades. Tanya and Emeritus Professor Peter Pinson curated an chicken-wire and paper model under Margo’s Just as importantly, they are a living connection with exhibition that was shown in Canberra in 2011 and supervision using Gerald Lewers’ maquette the Lewers family and the spirit of the times and have then, supplemented by work from their own collections, 29 toured fve regional galleries in N.S.W. from 2011 to 2014 sculptures by Carl Plate. Newcastle was an appropriate with the sisters on the road to give public talks. choice as the site of the once controversial, now iconic James Cook Memorial Fountain (1966) by Margel Hinder With undisguised zeal, Darani tells me about and because of the gallery’s fne modernist collection their current plans to make a flm about Abstract which includes several Margo Lewers’ paintings and Expressionism in N.S.W. ‘Darani is confdent that we can ’s luminal kinetic works. turn ourselves into flm-makers’, says Tanya. ‘She says I’m another Margo!’ laughs Darani. Overtures have already ‘It will defnitely be the biggest exhibition of Gerald’s been made to artists and their descendants as well as work [since his death]’, says Cassi, who is grateful for experts in the feld who have agreed to be involved. The Darani’s detective work tracking down specifc pieces sisters are currently seeking funding. including one ‘I had given up on and that someone had told me was stolen. She found it and it’s a key work’. Meanwhile cultural historian and writer Cassi Plate is curating a major exhibition Sydney 6—Hinders, Lewers It is not hard to fnd common values between the & Plates: Abstract Artists, Friends, Partners, Siblings, generations of this exceptional family: a pioneering, 1940s-1970s to be held at the Newcastle City Gallery risk-tasking creative spirit; a wide-ranging interest in all from May to August, 2015. The exhibition has been the arts; a willingness to branch out into new media and conceived around the Lewers house as a centre for work across diferent art forms; a deep empathy with modernism—‘the Sydney equivalent of Heide’—and the Australian bush; a generous collegiality with fellow the close association of three modernist artist couples: artists. Within the extended Lewers-Plate-Crothers Gerald and Margo Lewers, Carl and Jocelyn Plate and family, there is an enduring closeness and ethos of Frank and Margel Hinder. mutual support and pride.

The exhibition promises to cast new light on pioneering The Lewers have earned their place in Australian art Above: Margo Lewers, and cross-media work by these six artists including history and their legacy deserves to be preserved Plexiglass sculpture, c.1971 sculpture, drawing, collage, fabric and theatre design, and appreciated. No one knows that better than the mosaics and painting. It will include works rarely if ever dedicated daughters of Carl Plate, and Margo and Left: Margo Lewers, Wall seen before, including paintings by Jocelyn Plate and Gerald Lewers. hangings, painted fabric, Julian Leatherdale exhibition Macquarie Galleries 1975 RESOURCES Below: Margo Lewers, Untitled, c.1970 Cassi Plate, Restless Spirits, Picador, 2005. Cassi Plate and Jacqui Strecker, A Restless Life: Journeys through the Pacifc, Asia and Australasia 1887-1913—Adolf Gustav Plate, catalogue, Lewers Bequest and Penrith Regional Gallery, 1997. Denise Hickey, Gerald and Margo Lewers: Their Lives and Their Work, limited edition, Grasstree Press, 1982. Laurie Thomas, Gerald Lewers Memorial Exhibition, select exhibition of works at AGNSW, Queensland Art Gallery and National Gallery of South Australia, 1963. Pamela Bell, Margo Lewers Retrospective, National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery, 2000. Peter Pinson, Tanya Crothers and Gillian Mitchell, Expansion: Margo Lewers Mosaic Mural Canberra Rex Hotel, catalogue for exhibition curated by Professor Pinson, Darani Lewers and Tanya Crothers, ACT Heritage, 2010. John Henshaw, Art and Australia, vol 16, no 2, Dec 1978, profles of Carl Plate and Margo Lewers, pp 131-133. Tanya Crothers, Once there was a Garden, Sydney, 2014.

Hazel de Berg: oral history interview with Margo Lewers about her painting, 1962 http://nla.gov.au/nla.oh-vn1696646 Hazel de Berg: oral history interview with Margo Lewers about Gerald Lewers, 1965 http://nla.gov.au/nla.oh-vn279797 http://penrithregionalgallery.org/ Joan Kerr, ‘Margo Lewers: Thoroughly Modern’, Australian Art Collector, Issue 24, April-June 2003 http://www.artcollector.net.au/ Assets/490/1/24_lewers.pdf Carl Plate: Collage 1938 -1976 http://www.sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au/Arts_Entertainment/Hazelhurst/Exhibitions/Previous_Exhibitions/2009/Carl_Plate_ Collage_1938_-_1976 TROVE—Australian Women’s Weekly, Jan 5, 1935 : ‘Textile Designing—A Coming Art— Clever Australian Woman Returns from Abroad with All the Latest Handcraft Ideas!’ http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/47207878?searchTerm=margo%20lewers&searchLimits=l-decade=193|||l-year=1935 31