Womens work around the world | addis fine art x brooke

We invited a group of leading private client advisors to join us for a networking evening at Addis Fine Art Gallery to learn more about the work of Brooke charity.

ABOUT BROOKE

Brooke is an international charity that protects and improves the lives of horses, donkeys and mules which give people in the developing world the opportunity to work their way out of poverty. In order to sustainably improve equine welfare they recognise the complex interaction between the equine, the equine owning communities, and the system within which they co-exist. Brooke believes that change to human behaviour needs to happen at all levels in order achieve transformational change for the equines and the communities that rely on them for their livelihoods.

On arrival in Egypt in 1930, Dorothy Brooke, the wife of a British cavalry officer, sought out the former war horses that had been put to work in Cairo and beyond when the conflict ended in 1918. Her pleas in a letter to the editor of the then Morning Post (now The Telegraph) were heard, and with help from the British public, Dorothy raised enough money to buy back 5,000 of the horses. She then went on to set up a free veterinary clinic in Cairo in 1934 – the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital – and so Brooke's work began.

ABOUT ADDIS FINE ART

In 2016, Rakeb Sile and Mesai Haileleul co-founded Addis Fine Art, creating the first white-cube gallery space for modern and contemporary art in Ethiopia. Described as one of the "Most Important Young Galleries in the World" (Artsy 2019), the gallery has since then grown to become one of the leading galleries in Africa, establishing a prominent international platform for artists from the Horn of Africa.

In October 2021, the gallery moved into an expanded premises in London, a two-storey gallery space in the heart of Fitzrovia. The London gallery programme encapsulates Addis Fine Art’s commitment to heightened international exposure for, and critical reappraisal of, African art on the world stage. The gallery’s Addis Ababa space continues to be an incubator for emerging talent, facilitating critical engagement within the local market and encouraging the growth and development of the artworld ecosystem on the continent. The gallery will also serve as a space for artists from the diaspora to return to the continent and share and develop their practice.