2018, 544 mm × 466 mm, 1/20 limited edition screen print acrylic on paper

Tenzing Rigdol is a multimedia contemporary artist, trained in the traditional Tibetan art of thangka painting. Born in exile in Nepal, his practice is inspired by these age-old artistic traditions and their philosophies as well as ongoing contemporary political conflicts. Rigdol captures, interprets and subverts these elements in works that are critical and unavoidably political.

The print series Forever Ready plays with the recognisable thangka composition to present a portrait based on an undated photograph of Tenzin Gyatso, before he was recognised as the 14th Dalai Lama at the age of five in 1940. Overlaid on a gold and red background of a repeating Buddha image, the Dalai Lama is depicted with the additions of a thin silver halo, a stethoscope and carrying a small suitcase. This iconography points to the complex role of the Dalai Lama in the 21st century, as not only the religious leader of the Tibetan people around the world but as carrying the hopes of an exiled community longing for the healing of a seven decade-long conflict.

1991, 390mm x 330mm, etching (framed 740 mm x 640 mm), number 1 of 20

This beautiful etching, donated by Joanna Lumley, was made by Jean-Pierre Burkhalter from a photograph taken by Colonel Leslie Weir in 1930. It depicts the famous Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, traditionally the home of the Dalai Lama until the 14th Dalai Lama was driven into exile in 1959.

Colonel Leslie Weir was Joanna Lumley's grandfather, and the artist was a family friend, so this exquisite piece really is steeped in history and personal to Joanna.

A handwritten inscription on the back reads "One of my treasured possessions, always hanging in my home. Joanna Lumley"

2012, 410mm x 510 mm, oil on canvas

Alan Cotton is one of Britain’s most distinctive landscape painters, recognised for his distinctive knife painting that layers thick oil paint onto the canvas surface, picking out the physicality of landscape in a richly textured impasto.

The mountain range in Tibet - Fiery Clouds Beyond the Summit is the perfect subject for Cotton’s technique, with the harsh environment of the Himalayas expertly marked out with smoothly building paint strokes. The cool tones of the mountains in the foreground contrast with the warmth and brilliance of the sun-tinted clouds behind them, Cotton’s strokes gentler and less angular here. Daubed in highly pigmented thick, short strokes, the reflected sunlight hitting the mountain peak is the painting’s culmination in both subject and technique.

Alan says: "I am very happy to support Tibet Relief Fund having spent quite a lot of time in Tibet on two occasions, firstly as Expedition Artist with my good friend, Sir David Hempleman - Adams who, with several members of his team, successfully reached the summit of the North Face. The first time I was detained by the Chinese police, who wrongly believed I was part of a group of Americans who had painted anti-Chinese slogans at the Rongbruk Monastery. As a result, I was kicked out of Tibet, without ever seeing Everest. The second time David and I returned together, when I was able to reach 22,000 feet and did many drawings from which the Everest paintings evolved."

2015, 290mm x 410mm, photograph (framed 465mm x 590mm). Image was taken at the old Tashi Lhunpo temple in Bylakuppe, South India.

Photographer and Buddhist Geoff Harris travelled to the Tashi Lhunpo monastery in 2015 to photograph the Tibetan Buddhist monks and their activities. His shots paint a vivid picture of monastic life; debating sessions, cooking and Losar celebrations are just a few activities you can see in Geoff’s photos.

2014, 760 mm x 1010 mm, hand-cut stencil, spray paint and acrylic on canvas

Panos Antonopoulos is a conceptual artist living and working in Barcelona. His work is both inspired by, and challenges, contemporary society and its institutions and structures. Working across a variety of media, Antonopoulos intends to provoke the spectator to move beyond conventional approaches to reality and its consequences. He sees contemporary art and its creation as limitless, with a duty to be untethered by any form of power and to always be critical.

Namaste is a strongly graphic street art piece depicting the iconic image of Gandhi, alongside a child, sat in peaceful demonstration for Tibet’s freedom in front of the Chinese parliament. Part of Antonopoulos’ “The Kid” series, the child featured in Namaste is Charlie Chaplin’s homonymous character, with the work alluding to both the innocence and illegality of The Kid.

Panos says: "The painting is a peaceful demonstration for Tibet’s freedom, in front of the Chinese parliament. ”Namaste” is part of The Kid series. The Kid is a collection of artworks where Charlie Chaplin’s homonymous character is featuring. These works seem to create their own rules with a strong street art reference and resemblance to hero’s innocence and illegality. I was highly interested in participating in the auction from Tibet Relief Fund, as having visited Mcleod Ganj myself and talking to people there, I wanted to be a small part of a potential solution to the Tibetan issue. Furthermore, I have also collaborated in the past with artistic projects with Tibet Relief Fund and I was very happy to be invited and do it again."

2019, 210mm x 297mm, pen on paper

Simon Pearsall is an award-winning cartoonist and regular contributor to Private Eye, The New Statesman and The Spectator. His regular cartoon, “First Drafts” has been running in Private Eye since 2002.

Resilience deftly takes on the subjects of oppressive regimes and their overzealous imprisonment of dissenters by uniting the diminutive image of an imprisoned monk and his towering cell-mate with the humorous caption “...standing up to bullies - what are you in for?” Pearsall’s cartoon satirises the excessive force used by totalitarian political systems and celebrates the actions of those individuals who challenge them.

Simon says: "Ever since one of my sisters joined an expedition to the Himalayas when I was about ten I've thought of them as something to do with our family! I then got interested in climbing myself, although nothing as exotic or committed as what she did. Mine was confined to Glencoe and North wales. Also, I like Tibet's resilence in the face of China, very inspiring to remember when events threaten to overwhelm. And lastly, I draw a lot. Always trying to make it pay. So, never having much cash to spare, if I get a chance to use my drawings for a good cause I'll gratefully take the opportunity."

2016, 420mm x 297 mm, fine art giclée print, archival pigment ink on Tosa Shi Japanese paper (pH neutral acid free)

Sam Winston’s practice focuses on language, not just as a communicator but as a visual form in its own right. Through performance, poetry and drawing, Winston explores the depth and complexity of language

Breath is a reflection on the restorative power of the breath in meditation. Winston uses his background in typography to depict the chemical symbols of nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. With the letterforms in a delicate serif font he creates the swirling image of an exhalation, moving from central density to disperse across the paper.

Sam says: "Many of us have benefited from the unique culture and legacy of Tibet. As an artist I became immersed in many of the wisdom traditions when I met my dear friend and monk - Lama Lhakpa Yeshe who is from Kham a region of eastern Tibet. His warm sense of humour and simple dedication to compassion still inspire and teach me to this day. This artist print is a typographic work using the symbols CO2 of O2 - which make up the basic chemical elements of breathing. Watching the breath is one of the first meditation practises many people learn to help combat an overstimulated and distracted mind. Deceptively simple, it also turns out that it can also be one of the the most profound practises as well. It seems it a fitting artwork to be offered here to help support the Tibet communities that have forested these skills for millennia."

2019, 400mm x 400mm (520mm x 520mm with borders), etching

Georgina Fay is a London-based artist and art education facilitator whose practice is both installation and print-based. Her work currently examines the themes of loss of imagination, finding home, mapping our world and understanding nature vs man-made. Fay’s prints begin with photographs or digital imagery from which she produces etchings through traditional intaglio techniques. Once made, Fay explores the contrast between digital and analogue through drawing on and marking the print’s surface.

In her print Beckonings Beyond the Window Fay depicts a roofscape over which a flock of birds streams towards the foreground. Signalling ideas of mass migration away from the home, the viewer is left behind, observing this movement through the roughly printed window frame enclosing the image.

Georgina says: "'Beckonings Beyond the Window' is an etching exploring themes of home, migration and looking through the window being left behind which for me resonated with the struggle of the Tibetan people."

1998, 150mmx230mm (275mmx380mm with borders), monoprint. Signed and marked "unique".

Raj Verdi is a London-based printmaker making etchings and monotypes. In her etchings she explores surreal ideas of the imagination. She works using intense colour and her calculated compositions create alternative imaginary landscapes. Rather than the concentional technique of making an edition of identical prints from an etched plate, Verdi uses the medium of etching to make unique individual prints. By inking and reworking the plate and printing it using different printing techniques and different colours, she creates a series of between 6 and 12 one-off and individual prints from each etched plate. She chooses not to title some of her works, instead she numbers them, preferring to allow the viewer free reign to read their own interpretation into the works.

1989, 530 x 630 mm, Indian ink and watercolour (framed)

Lydia Corbett is a French artist living and working in Devon. Initially known as Sylvette, a muse for Picasso in the 1950s and subject of 40 of his works, Corbett is a renowned artist in her own right working predominantly in ink and watercolour. Her work is known for its dreamlike freedom of form which abandons the reality of material existence, shunning perspective and interweaving people with animals, nature and the Provencal textiles of her childhood.

Loving Dance depicts a large central vase of flowers, a common motif in Corbett’s work, flanked by three undulating figures. The vase and flowers are picked out in delicate but vibrant watercolour, emphasised by the bruised dark blue wash that surrounds it. In contrast, the figures are left largely devoid of colour, with the lone woman on the left looking beyond the paper’s edge, and an embracing couple on the right, the woman with her eyes closed and the man appearing to look across the vase to the woman beyond.

Lydia says: "When I look at the elderly Tibetan women that Tibet Relief Fund help, I often see myself in their faces. The freedom that I have been able to enjoy as an artist is something that I have never taken for granted. It is so sad that same freedom has not been there for the Tibetans of my generation to enjoy. I hope this auction might mean that future generations of Tibetans do!"

2015, 400 mm x 600 mm, photograph (framed 580 mm x 790 mm)

Photographer and Buddhist Geoff Harris travelled to the Tashi Lhunpo monastery in 2015 to photograph the Tibetan Buddhist monks and their activities. His shots paint a vivid picture of monastic life; debating sessions, cooking and Losar celebrations are just a few activities you can see in Geoff’s photos.

"Delivering Bread" shows bread being made and delivered for Losar (Tibetan new year) celebrations. The image was Highly Commended in the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year competition in 2016.

2014, 290 mm x 390 mm, photograph (framed 525 mm x 425 mm)

A 27-year-old Tibetan who did not want to disclose his identity sits in his room in New Delhi. He escaped into India in 1992 and says the 22 years away from his family have made him strong and emotionless. His mother has grown old and conveys her yearning to meet him but he doubts whether he will get a visa. He says he misses his parents when he watches family-based dramas and movies.

Tsering Topgyal is a young Tibetan photographer based in India. He escaped from Tibet when he was just eight years old, when his parents paid a smuggler to take him across the Himalayas on foot. Tsering took up photography at school in India, later landing a job with Associated Press in Delhi. Now he exhibits his own work around the world. His photos are a powerful and moving reminder of the human impact of a country being invaded and repressed, and the desperate actions Tibetans will take for the freedom to display their flag, speak their language and learn their religion.

As Tsering says, “many foreigners do stories about Tibet, but as a Tibetan I feel it and see it from a different angle”.

2019, 400mm x 300mm, oil on natural linen canvas

Simone Sandelson was formally trained in the intense discipline of traditional portraiture but her painting practice takes inspiration from a wide range of sources and experiences. Sandelson aims to provoke an honest response from the viewer, whether complex and emotional or a simple aesthetic response, embracing the transformative power of art.

Flags for Peace is one such evocative piece, capturing the Tibetan practice of hanging strings of prayer flags and allowing the wind to carry their mantras and spread compassion and peace. Here Sandelson employs her favoured palette of muted colours, suggesting the fading of prayer flags over time as they are left exposed to the elements to carry their goodwill around the world.

Simone says: "Colourful Buddhist prayer flags have been fluttering in the wind across Tibet for centuries. Tibetans believe their prayers will be blown by the wind to spread peace and compassion into the world. They are now discouraged by the Chinese occupation. I have been to Dharamsala doing Art Workshops with Tibetan children living in exile there. They painted poignant paintings of their memories of living in Tibet and their love for their country and their families from which they are separated. I’m happy to donate a painting to raise much-needed funds to help them maintain their culture which is in danger of being eliminated by occupation."

1998, 180mmx270mm, monoprint (framed 340mmx450mm). Signed and marked "unique".

Raj Verdi is a London-based printmaker making etchings and monotypes. In her etchings she explores surreal ideas of the imagination. She works using intense colour and her calculated compositions create alternative imaginary landscapes. Rather than the concentional technique of making an edition of identical prints from an etched plate, Verdi uses the medium of etching to make unique individual prints. By inking and reworking the plate and printing it using different printing techniques and different colours, she creates a series of between 6 and 12 one-off and individual prints from each etched plate. She chooses not to title some of her works, instead she numbers them, preferring to allow the viewer free reign to read their own interpretation into the works.

c.1960, 290mm x 390mm, reprint of photograph from Tibet Relief Fund's archives (framed 420mm x 520mm).

Newly arrived Tibetan refugees in Dharamsala.

2003, 498mm x 397mm, 1/50 giclee print on acid-free hand-made watercolour paper using UV lightfast inks as verified by the Fine Art Trade Guild (mounted 610mm x 720mm). Published for Tibet Relief Fund.

Durand's first audience with His Holiness took place in 1982, at the convent of San Anselmo, Rome. At the request of Lord Ennals, H H The Dalai Lama granted a second audience to Durand in Strasbourg in April 1989. The Jewel in the Lotus is one of two life-size portraits to emerge from the sittings.