Interview with Manko: "It's a full-blown collaboration at its most intense"

By Saskia Gall at Art In Action

How did you get into life modelling?

On my 14th birthday my parents took me to an artist's studio to get my portrait done as a surprise present. I was a shy teen suffering the ugly duckling phase, so I was mortified to sit for an artist! He asked me to find a spot on his studio wall and focus on it while he drew me... He put his charcoal to the paper, took a step back and said "you know, you grow up into an extraordinary looking woman." I didn't really believe him, but it was such a thrill, and I was hooked. I was captivated with the idea that the way other people see me is quite separate from my own complexes, insecurities and how I see myself in the mirror. 

Later, when I moved to London with a small suitcase and a heart full of idealistic anglophilic fancies, I never intended to become a model - it was just "free money for being young",  a by-product of having to pay rent and tube fares to my fabulous adventures. Amongst random jobs as a hairdressers' model, a pin-up girl on an alt site, catwalks and fashion shoots, I ended up getting my kit off at a local art school too... My beloved dandy Quentin Crisp was a life model, and I read his books about being the Naked Civil Servant with a passionate abandon... I loved it (and ended up getting a fine art scholarship from that job)! I worked as a life model ever since.

Manko with her painting of Britney as a "martyr icon of slebs"

 What led you to the Life Drawing Collective?

Recently I found myself at a gig where I was holding Andrew's amazing body as my dead Jesus son while channeling Virgin Mary, and the artists' response was glorious (I'd never even posed in such an intimate way with another life model before).
Afterwards we chatted about how underrated the profession of life modelling was.

This occupation is still burdened by a frustratingly misjudged presumptions of the "life hack" type stories as one of many unskilled jobs anybody broke should have a go at  - somewhere between envelope stuffing and selling your hair for profit. It really is not that simple!

Alas, life models have no union, and the recommended pay rate has not gone up in decades. We are often left in cold uncomfortable unsupervised rooms, sometimes open to general drunken public who have no idea of etiquette. The success of a life drawing group utterly depends on the reliability, professionalism and dedication of the model, yet they often get paid less than the person who holds the stopwatch. Andrew and I agreed that we need to start a movement that reclaims pride in the profession by being the best we can. We made this collective to claim a fair pay scheme between life models based on equal profit share, while creating exquisite 'tableaux vivants' for the artists to draw multi-model compositions at the regular ticket price.

  

Manko and Andrew at the Industry Workshops, Vaults, Waterloo

Our third member, the amazing firecracker of a woman that is Carla, impressed me with her beautiful mind and stunning hourglass curves. 

Being in a collective is a great challenge - this is not one of those gigs where you just turn up and get your kit off. We all work bloody hard at this project, but it's a labour of love, and we absolutely believe in its success.

Is it weird being naked? 

"Nudity is trivial" said Karl Lagerfeld when he was shooting nude supermodels. I love fashion, making costumes, creating characters… But when I'm sky-clad and anonymous at a life-drawing class in a purely academic setting, I don't get to give stylistic input how I'm represented. Artists distort my face and body shapes to suit their style, to which I submit quietly and happily as though I were a blank canvas. It is typical of artists to mould me into their vision - even if the drawer meticulously measures my proportions against the end of their pencil, more often than not their taste will warp the reality, subconsciously taking over and twisting the lines. That's the curious result of the process of my visual image getting translated through someone's living eye, their brain, past experiences, desires, tastes, then into their hand and finally the pencil/charcoal/paintbrush.

by Morganico

What goes on in your head when you're naked?

While I pose I need to find a way to entertain myself (and some sustained poses can go on for as long a 60 hours!). Sometimes I play my favourite movies in my head. Sometimes I wear an old perfume to induce a memory. Sometimes, I just count how many breaths I take in 20 minute segments. 

I meditate. It might sound corny but when in life you are constantly on your computer, phone or human interactions around you, and having some time off is a kind of glorious relief, an internal discipline… it's almost masochistic.
I try to explain it in this video I made about the job as a life model for ishotmyself.com, a site about nude self-portraiture:

ICONOLOGICA by MANKO from ishotmyself on Vimeo.

Is life modelling easy?  

It's not easy! Imagine working 9-5 Mon-Fri holding the same pose for 11 weeks on a rotating platform for a SFX course... I loved the Madame Tussaud level of sculpts that came out of that venture, however afterwards I ended up splashing out for an osteopath to get my spine back into place!

What is the metaphysical aspect of model becoming a muse?

It's complicated. Mostly I'm just a drunk girl running around London nightclubs in crazy outfits and kissing everyone, while someone writes songs about me or turns me into a book characters. In an appreciative return for my musehood I take photos, make videos, create magazine layouts and sew stage outfits. I'm told I challenge the artists rather than being a mere subject, and "it's intensely exciting" (<not my words). I'm not sure what musehood is, as I myself utilise people, from fictional characters to mysterious anonymous strangers alike, to "muse" and inspire me in my own work.
A muse is not just a glamorous cocktease who gets her tits out at a fabulous party. There is a crazy magic, but there's also a pay-off.  It's a full-blown collaboration in its most intense sense.

by Alessandra Tissato, Helen Olds, Alex Heath, etc

What other artists, models, muses or characters do you admire, do you have inspirations/favourites?

Obviously Quentin Crisp…  Gala Dali, Michele Lamy, Divine, Edie Sedwick, Elizabeth Ist, Iggy, Ziggy, Nureyev or Frida Kahlo, and hundreds of other people of intense style and power.

I'll let you in on a secret… I like to channel my idols. For example, if I feel that I'm lacking an old school glamour before I step on the set, in my head I might pretended to be Candy Darling - the transsexual Warhol superstar who was more feminine than I could ever be, and although I bet she was mostly quite insecure to have been born in a male body, that fact makes it that much more powerful to me, because she had to work extra hard to become the glamorous woman I adore, and that's the energy that I am trying to "borrow". I'm evoking a mythical archetype that empowers me. Venus, Mary, Elizabeth or Patsy Stone… it's quite magical and it always works.

Femme Fatale session at Orbital Comics, art by Jason Atomic, Rainer Stolle, etc

Tell us about your most memorable life-modelling gig.

After doing a shoot for Suicidegirls at the Chelsea Hotel in NYC (a genderfuck photo story about Sid & Nancy), I was roaming the art-laden corridors of the legendary hotel in search of rock'n'roll ghosts, when a short British chap in a hat startled me in an empty hallway with an invite to his studio… He turned out to be a Royal academician, and gave me a huge wad of green notes for 15 minutes of sketching me as I danced around his studio dressed as Sid Vicious and high on Adderall. But I saw his actual sketch of Quentin Crisp in his studio. It literally took my breath away...

I also loved my sessions with Dr Sketchy's, Art Macabre, Salon Exotique - some absolutely unique and epic memories. I am sure the best is still ahead of me now with Andrew and Carla!

By Aaron Jacob Jones - Art Macabre tribute to Alexander McQueen

Has life modelling changed you how you see yourself?

My idea of self is a fragile and volatile thing, I am insanely over-analytical and I rarely recognise myself in photos and drawings done by anyone but myself. Since my fashion modelling days I flirt with body dysmorphic disorder, and that's the magic of the job as a life model - seeing oneself not as you are, but as someone else sees you. 

A sculpture tutor once commented on the portrait busts of me at the end of the first year course: "And here are eighteen different ways to offend your beauty." I didn't feel that way at all, it was heady (excuse the pun) and infinitely exciting to me!

by Anastasia Pollard

What would be your dream modelling job?

I want to pose with Carla and Andrew at the Royal Opera House, held up on the arms of corps de ballet, dressed by McQueen and Westwood, amongst lavish sets by Pierre et Gilles, to the original score of Handel, shot by David LaChapelle and drawn by da Vinci, Modigliani, Schiele, Dix and Salvador Dali, - then written about by Sartre and  Bukowski - hey, you did ask for a dream!

Dr Sketchy's NYC, photo by Andreas Frenyo

Follow The Life Drawing Collective and come to one of our sessions on Sunday 15th or Saturday 21st November.