Eric Thake—Do You See What I See?

Eric Thake (1904-1982) had a unique way of looking at the world. In his prints, drawings, paintings and photographs, he created a singular vision, transforming the everyday and the familiar into the spectacular and the surreal through his whimsical sense of humour and refined modernist aesthetic.

During the 1930s, Thake challenged conservative Melbourne with his early Surrealist imagery. Appointed as a RAAF official war artist during WWII, in 1945-46 he travelled through Australia and the western Pacific, producing a compelling body of paintings that recorded the damage and detritus of war. Throughout his life Thake worked as a commercial illustrator, while undertaking diverse design commissions including bookplates, stamps and murals, as well as capturing rural Australia as seen on outback holidays. His distinctively quirky perception of the world is most apparent in the series of annual Christmas cards he created for friends between 1941-80, as well as in his deft drawings, sketches and, later, photographs.

The first survey of Thake’s art in fifty years, Eric Thake—Do You See What I See? will bring together his best-known works as well as many that will be a revelation and a delight to all.