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Saturday, November 3, 2012

Rae Ogilvie :: Syria :: SALE!

This just in! Rae Oglivie has just dropped in to announce all photos from the ' Syria' exhibition have been reduced to ten dollars! 
Proceeds from all sales go to Medicins Sans Frontiers for relief aid to innocents in Syria, and they make a beautiful Xmas gift too. 
Drop in and grab a momento of thousand years of history to share. Show comes down Friday!

Syria
When I saw the world full of constraint,
Terror sent me riding on an endless journey.
 
Some words of Al- Akhtal, (c640-c710), a Christian poet of the Umyyard court in Damascus.
An exhibition of photographs taken by Rae Ogilvie just months before conflict flared in Syria, showing the everyday life that was - people, places, history.
















15 November - 25 November 2012
Opening event :: Thursday 15th November, 6 - 9pm
All Welcome

The exhibition is a response to the chaos in Syria that for months we’ve seen on our nightly
news, chaos that has caused an alarming tide of displaced people to flee to neighbouring
countries.

There are 60 photographs, taken in Aleppo, Damascus, Ezra and Bosra late in 2009, before
the landscape turned to war. Everyday moments speak of the life lived by thousands of
ordinary people now struggling to survive in refugee camps. People trapped in these camps
have no way of knowing when they can go home.

Humanitarian aid is badly needed in the camps, which are crowded, hot, dusty and disease
ridden. If this exhibition can give encouragement to individuals and groups who are making a
direct and substantial contribution to provide aid, then it will be worthwhile.

When I travelled my camera was my notepad and sketchbook. My interest lay in living
culture and cultural heritage. Images in the exhibition were selected to fit within the theme
of everyday life lived amongst ancient history. The region is thought to have the oldest
civilisations in the world, conservatively going back to the third millennium BC.

About the photographer
Rae Ogilvie was born in Adelaide, and moved to Sydney to study painting and photography
at the National Art School in 1974. She left Australia for Japan in 1977 to study calligraphy, woodblock printing and sumie painting, before going to Paris in 1978 to take up a residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts. 

On returning to Australia, she specialised in lithography, which she taught at the National Art
School in 1997. This was followed by a 25 year career change, when she taught English to migrants and refugees who had recently arrived in Australia. 

Before her retirement two years ago, Rae taught English in Abu Dhabi (UAE) for three years, and travelled extensively in the Middle East.

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