Tibetan Monks Sand Painting in Bermondsey

Kagyu Samye Dzong London is a Tibetan Buddhist Centre based in the grand surrounds of the former Bermondsey Public Library in Spa Road SE1. Later this week it will host a visit by monks from the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery  in India, including the creation of a Sand Mandala, a dance performance and interactive workshops open to all.

The monks creating a mandala in Salisbury earlier this month

The events run from 25th to 30th October (full programme here) and will culminate in a ceremony at Tower Bridge:

'Of all the artistic traditions of Tantric Buddhism, that of painting with coloured sand is one of the most exquisite.  The mandala essentially is a representation of the celestial mansion or abode of a principal deity or deities, surrounded by their retinues, and representing the path and fruition of the particular cycle of practices.  To make a sand mandala, millions of grains of sand are painstakingly laid into place in an intricate design over a period of several days using hollow tubes called chagpurs.  The material used is ground marble dust – but in ancient times powdered precious and semi-precious stones were also used. The monks will be creating a Medicine Buddha Mandala.

A total of eight monks will be making the mandala over a period of five days. The exhibition begins with a short dedication prayer, and on completion, the mandala is dismantled in a moving ceremony during which the sand is swept into the centre of the table, symbolizing the impermanence of all things.  A small amount of sand will be poured into the Thames after a small procession from the centre to Tower Bridge, and people attending the ceremony can take away with them small bags of sand as a memory of the event.

Wed 30th Oct: 10am - 12pm - Completion and Closing Prayers at 10am and the Pouring Ceremony at Tower Bridge at 12 noon'.

Lowry's Deptford Painting

The L.S. Lowry exhibition at Tate Britain closes on October 20th. I took my mum and we tried to find the original of the print we had in our 1970s front room like so many other people at that time - but to be honest a lot of the pictures were very similar and we couldn't be sure which one it was! I remember being lambasted in the pub by a left wing Labour Party activist when I was a teenage young socialist and he put me on the spot about what art I liked. Frankly I could hardly name an artist at the time, so I meekly mentioned Lowry (well we had one in our house!). He jumped down my throat telling me that 'Lowry was so anti working class'. It was one of those classic 'middle class lefty would be saviour of the working class sneering at the taste of working class people' moments. I remembered all this when I saw that Tate had managed to get Marxist/sometime Situationist art historian  T J Clark to co-curate the exhibition and redeem Lowry's critical reputation - whether he succeeded or not I'm not sure. Said Labour activist turned out to be right that I should check out Picasso anyway.

Most of Lowry's pictures are famously of the north of England, but in 1959 he painted a view of Deptford Power Station from Greenwich. It is in the National Maritime Museum collection and isn't featured at Tate.

Deptford Power Station photographed in 1973 - it was demolished in 1992. The Millennium Quay housing development now stands on that site.

Deptford Dolphins in Daring (Dangerous?) Thames Swim

This has come from some people who may or may not be close to the Deptford Three Sided Football Club. The tale of  a 'pre war equinoctial swim' in Deptford may or may not be pseudo-history. But they are deadly serious about swimming in the Thames at Deptford on Sunday 22 September:

'Through playing 3-sided-football with some of the guys down at (new) Deptford Green on sundays there has been a move to try and establish a Deptford Alternative Sports group and a few of us have decided to try and kick start this by resurrecting the pre war equinoctial swim out to the Borthwick dolphins from the Watergate steps. This (apparently) used to occur around the 21st Sept at the autumn high tide and involved swimming out from the steps to the crane derrick, climbing to the top of the wooden support braces and diving back in to return to the steps. Accomplishment of the swim would (apparently) allow the participant to be addressed as a "Deptford Dolphin".

We are intending to do the swim at the 3.15pm high tide on Sunday 22nd September. Meeting in the Dog & Bell pub on Watergate St at 2.00pm. While there are three of us committed, it would be great to expand participation a bit'.

OK at low tide it doesn't look far from the shore to the crane derrick (the structure on the left), but there will be water in between. Strong swimmers only and I would leave the drinking until afterwards!