All from Kathmandu.

Just like in Madagascar (see Malagasy bundle), I can't help noticing here the way people group objects and materials into clusters, stacks and the like.

Shops are bulging with goods which spill onto the streets. I guess the scarcity of storage space and the advertising powers of cornucopia-like displays have something to do with it.

The skills used to make these bundles vary from the improvised to the artfully methodical.

Inspiring stuff for sculptors. I took the image on the left in the Kathmandu valley some days ago. On the right, Barry Flanagan's no. 5 '71, from 1971, part of Tate's collection.

Next November, the 2nd edition of KIAF will open its doors and your work could be there, alongside an interesting crop of international and Nepali artists. The theme this year is climate change and you can find out all about it on www.artmandu.org

_Application for international artists closes at the end of this month (February). As a refreshing difference to the majority of open calls in the UK, application is free. I've already submitted mine so, with a bit of luck, see you there (as in, here).

I asked my friend Govinda Sah, a Nepali painter based in London, about the bandaged figures of gods I had seen in some sculpture shops in Patan.

The best figures, he told me, the ones with more chances to successfully incarnate a god or goddess, are protected in this way to keep their aura. Once bought, they will be taken away by their new owners and, through long sessions of prayer, charged with enough power to be, at last, publicly displayed.

(He also told me that serious traditional sculptors may paint the eyes of the gods at midnight before a new moon, in full darkness, to better protect them from the light when they first open.)

Sculptures of gods are not representations of distant entities. They embody them, here and now, and are exposed to the material dangers and conditions of the world. They partake in everyday life and are regularly covered in layer upon layer of colour, offered food and flowers and darkened by the smoke of ghee candles.

The remains of faith and adoration are everywhere, piling up with all the other debris generated by the city. The life of the spirit leaves a very physical trail behind.