A closely-spaced periodic array of identical thin rigid plates illuminated by incident waves is shown to act as a negative refraction metamaterial. The close-spacing assumption is used as a basis for an approximation in which the region occupied by the plate array acts as an effective medium. Effective matching conditions on the plate array boundary are also derived. The approximation allows explicit expressions to be derived to wave scattering problems involving titled plate arrays. This approximation is tested for its accuracy against an exact treatment of the problem based on Bloch-Floquet theory. Both the exact and effective medium theory predict perfect wave transmission at {\it all} wave frequencies through the array when the tilt angle of plates in the array is the reverse of the incident wave direction: the array acts as an all-frequency perfectly-transmitting negative-refraction medium. For certain frequencies the array is also shown to act as an all-angle perfectly-transmitting negative-refraction material.