This life session blew hot and cold. Not in the sense of mood or atmosphere, or the comfort or appreciation of my poses, but in a rather literal way. The English spring climate had decided to have one of its throwback-to-winter days, and the one heater provided by Toynbee Art Club in the Dellow Centre’s art room was on a thermostat. This meant it decided intermittently – and incorrectly – that I could do without warm air for a while.
That aside, it was an enjoyable session. In the first half I went 5, 10, 15, 20-to-30-ish minutes, flowing from standing-stretching, to standing-lower, to kneeling, to sitting on the floor. After a tea break I was sitting on a chair with one of my feet on its seat for a single hour-long pose. Last time I modelled here I shared body warmth with Esther. My next booking here is in August, by which time hopefully we can rejoice in summer heat with open windows.
The Moon and Nude at The Old Dairy remains the only drawing group for which I’ve stepped in to act as a facilitator rather than model. On that occasion the model was called Edward. Fast forward almost two years and it was my own turn to be modelling at The Old Dairy for a stand-in facilitator… called Edward. I wondered whether it would turn out to be the same chap but, no, this Edward was the partner of Julia, one of the regular co-organisers.
I had been told that when my booking was announced to the group a week before, the news was greeted with a couple of “woos”. I interpreted this as enthusiasm rather than sarcastic dismay, and arrived full of encouragement for a good session. Pose lengths adhered to the traditional format in the first half: 5-minutes, 4, 3, 2, 1-minute, then 10, 15, 20-minutes. There must have been 20 to 30 artists present – not the largest crowd I’ve seen here, but still very good numbers.
Julia looked in unexpectedly during the interval, which was nice, but all was going well with Edward at the helm. She set us straight that the final pose should be 30-minutes rather than 45, and I felt inspired to close out the session standing. Afterwards, I took photos of drawings and, as always here, enjoyed having a chat and some laughs with the artists. I very much look forward to returning here at the end of June for duo poses with Esther. It remains one of my favourite places to model.
Two vivid red footprints remained on the white sheet. Ten perfect toes and two perfect soles, all drenched in human blood, formed a lasting impression of ‘Girl in Suitcase‘ at the 2016 Telegraph Hill Festival. I was a ticket-holder and, briefly, an impromptu participant at the Telegraph Hill performance in 2015; this year I was significantly more embroiled.
Esther is Girl in Suitcase, but she has reinvented and refreshed her signature work of performance art theatre unceasingly since its inception in 2009. She has collaborated with many talented people during that time, yet now she asked to work with me. I had reservations; I’m a life model and a nude art performer, but not a performance artist or actor. It was an offer, however, I could hardly refuse.
Preparation
In the weeks ahead of show time – 19 March – we discussed concepts and practice. It was a fascinating, immersive process to conjure with so many ideas and watch as they transformed into something tangible. By the end of our late February vacation in Venice, Esther had coalesced the strongest elements – some classic, others brand new – into a solid, coherent whole. Over the next fortnight she fashioned our script.
It was to be a play of a dozen segments. I was required to learn the lines of one; read lines for another; and be a physical presence towards the end. I had not tried learning lines since a primary school play almost forty years ago. Lacking a formal disciplined approach, I found it a struggle, and could only look on with huge admiration as Esther recited with passion her entire hour-long performance.
Upon the brink
On the day itself, our first challenge was to transform the erstwhile Old Library space in the Telegraph Hill Centre; gaining access at 4pm, we had three hours to turn an empty hall into a playhouse. Chairs were put out, a stage assembled, screens stood in front of doors and windows, a backdrop taped to the wall, props and art equipment placed in readiness, and a music desk set up with laptop and speakers.
All appeared to go well, although I was sorely vexed by inconsiderate parents who let their three little kids run feral around us whilst we were trying to work. Fresh air in the adjacent park eventually cooled me down. Esther, meanwhile, remained astoundingly serene. The early arrival of ticket holders meant we had no time for one last rehearsal. The moment to perform had come.
Segment 1 – suitcase / bandages
Our audience was hubbubbing into its seats; our friend Alessandra was poised at the laptop, ready to make music; and I was in the kitchen area wrapping naked Esther in bandages. A last kiss and hug, then I covered her with a large coat and escorted her to a suitcase on stage. She climbed in, I closed the lid, and we waited for everybody to quieten. When the time was right, Esther emerged…
No music accompanied the entrance; this was one woman’s raw ritual struggle to free herself from her entanglement, whilst sharing with the audience intimacies of her past. “I was born wrapped in many layers…” – I’d watched this scene develop, and it was a joy now to see it for real – “a migrant’s migrant… it might be hell for a while… learning about sex… in many circumstances… You now have a chance to draw me.”
Segment 2 – model and tutor
The audience was encouraged to try drawing Esther’s poses throughout the play, and no more so than in the ‘model and tutor’ scene – a Girl in Suitcase favourite. I was to play a dodgy old-fashioned art tutor who objectifies his model, and in doing so makes himself ridiculous. I had been given free rein to tweak a few lines to my own style, but essentially it was a familiar section. I just had to avoid being genuinely ridiculous.
I had recited these lines to myself so many times, over and over during the preceding weeks, yet even now I managed to have a minor brain freeze shortly after beginning. It seemed to last forever but, watching it again on video, I see it was merely a couple of seconds. Tricks of the mind. Once back on track I held my nerve, and Esther held her gritted pose to the bitter end.
Segment 3 – g-string and stilettos
I departed, leaving Esther to speak of her objectification and the hypocrisy of a world that sexualises nakedness and then feigns to be scandalised by it: “No breastfeeding in public! No nipples on Facebook! No nudity before nine!” – these words were made especially apt by the presence of a woman breastfeeding her baby in the audience. I returned briefly to chide Esther with legal guidelines.
Stoically hearing my insistence that she leave something to the imagination, Esther duly dressed… albeit in possibly the most revealing underwear that money can buy, with fetish stilettos, lipstick and a tickling feather. Thus she posed while Alessandra played ‘Sheela Na Gig’ by PJ Harvey – “you exhibitionist!” Both Esther and I had been indie kids in our very early days and still harbour a soft spot for Polly Jean.
Segment 4 – violence
“Here is the news.” Now for weightier stuff. Esther put down the feather, sat by a desk and read her bulletins: under-representation of women among world leaders, domestic abuse and rape in the UK, sexual abuse in childhood, hate crime against transgender people, women victims of honour killings, female genital mutilation. Meanwhile, I took away her erotic clothes and stood over her, toying with tools of violence.
The denouement saw Esther look up, as if noticing me for the first time, and direct a steely, belittling rebuke of dismissal. It may have garnered a snort or two of laughter, but the message contained in this scene was core to the whole performance. Esther had previously read the piece at a women-only Spirited Bodies event, where models felt quite moved by its juxtaposition with their own personal bodily concerns.
Segment 5 – bridal veil
Donning a white bridal veil, and picking up the knife that I’d left behind, Esther recited her vows before commencing a soliloquy of empowerment. “What do we sisters share underneath… this power, this pleasure… repressing, oppressing and hunting cunt… woman is too big to be boxed up… when she could be roaring and crashing through the universe!”
Throughout this scene, and those that preceded and would follow, images and videos were captured by a photographer friend – www.instagram.com/smokysushi – who’d kindly offered her services in exchange for support with a project of her own. When the monologue was at its end, Esther struck a suitably dramatic pose for the life drawers; cue ‘Girl on Fire’ by Alicia Keys.
Segment 6 – movement
“You now have the opportunity to draw a movement pose. I will begin to dance, slowly at first, but becoming faster.” This was Esther’s favourite part of the performance, I’m sure. As ‘Free Money’ by Patti Smith belted out, she abandoned herself more and more to the moment, becoming ever more free and wild… yet I missed it all as I was busy changing in readiness for the next segment.
Segment 7 – recycling
Ahead of the most dramatic scene, Esther – breathless from her dance – delivered a short monologue on recycling. “I try to use everything to the limit; old food, clothes, junk I find in the street, blood, boyfriends…” – the last bit being where I came in. If I was to be a recycled boyfriend, I suggested this would be most effective if I returned naked and meekly crumpled up to serve as a bench.
Sitting upon my back, Esther talked about things she uses to an obsessive extreme because she can’t bear to waste anything. Like much of her performance work, this piece was highly autobiographical; I can personally vouch that she lives her art with unquestionable integrity. The final item on her list was blood. Esther does not waste her blood. Anyone of a squeamish disposition should look away now.
Segment 8 – covered with blood
She stood, put her fingers inside herself and removed her Mooncup. From my folded position I could hear only a delicate suctioning squelch. “I had hoped that I would be bleeding today, but came on just over a week ago so there’s not much left here, but fortunately I saved my earlier blood from the week and I’m going to make art with it, and share the secrets and the smells of my old menses blood with you.”
As ‘You are the blood’ by Sufjan Stevens played to a hushed hall, Esther poured menstrual blood over her legs. Much ran off onto the stage, so she gathered it afresh with her palms and smeared it around her skin. When satisfied, she sat down on me in a defiant pose for the artists. After a couple of minutes she stood with one wet foot on my back. Her bloodening was captured beautifully on video.
Segment 9 – body painting
Having created art with her own blood, Esther next invited her audience to participate in this process by applying paint to her body. After the discord of Sufjan Stevens, the gentle guitar of ‘The winds that bring you home’ by Estas Tonne lilted whilst one, two or three at a time, people stepped forward to take a brush and make their marks. These were serene moments.
Segment 10 – drawing the audience
Whilst body painting has become a regular feature at Girl in Suitcase performances, possibly the favourite audience moment is when Esther invites them to step up and pose naked themselves. We wondered whether one or two people might have come here simply to enjoy participating in this bit. Esther vacated the stage, and no fewer the nine people came forward to join me in posing.
As Esther became the artist she asked her five female and five male models to show their exhilaration. ‘True Faith’ by New Order kicked in. I raised my arms as I often do for a 5-minute standing pose, but I suspect the chaps next to me who did likewise slowly came to regret it as the track played on. Nonetheless, I think everybody loved their moment of shared nude performance joy.
Segment 11 – competitive women
After our naked ensemble returned to their clothes, Esther addressed her audience one last time. “All this empowerment! All this energy! All this freedom!” In a closing monologue from the heart, she shared personal fears: “We women have more power than we’ve ever had in recent times, and yet I worry about what I might lose – what might be given away, slip away or be taken away.”
It was rather heart-wrenching for me to watch this unique woman that I love dearly, in the penultimate act of a powerful performance, standing strong in a war paint of blood and art, sharing so openly her fragility and self-doubt: “I worry more about how I might fall behind – how others blossom while I remain tied in knots… I have found freedom from the world; now I must find freedom from myself.”
Segment 12 – rope / suitcase
And so to the final act. Having tied herself in knots metaphorically, Esther invited two women from the audience to rope her physically before she returned to her suitcase. Fittingly, the final piece of music was the beautiful ‘Sanvean’ by Lisa Gerrard. For me, this track has become the definitive sound of Girl in Suitcase. It never ceases to have a moving effect.
Esther descended to the ordinary piece of luggage from which such an extraordinary performance had emerged an hour earlier. When she was curled up inside, I walked past slowly and lowered the lid. The last bars of Sanvean played out, to be followed immediately by a din of applause. Esther rose and shared her own appreciation with an audience that had engaged with her performance throughout.
In the aftermath
Esther and I, both still nude and bloody, mingled with her audience and chatted with friends. The original idea had been to record video interviews but, come the moment, Esther rightly felt that it was better for everyone simply to relax with glasses of wine and enjoy being in good company. We took greatest pleasure from seeing drawings that had been produced throughout the evening.
Slowly people departed, with the wonderful Alessandra being last to leave. Despite no preparation, she had done a flawless job at the sound desk – and then went the extra mile in cleaning away most of our mess – a true friend. Esther and I hadn’t wanted the evening to end, but the time had now come; we switched off the lights and lowered the shutters on a great occasion.
With all the paraphernalia of the event now rammed into the suitcase, we trundled off down Kitto Road to get a bus home. No showbiz glamour here; this was performance art: heart-on-sleeve, raw and bloody, honest and real. But the Girl in Suitcase journey doesn’t end at a south London bus stop. Not when she could be roaring and crashing through the universe…
“Perhaps you might indulge me to try something a little less strenuous?” My humble plea elicited chuckling and murmurs of consent all round. Upon request I’d spent the previous half-hour sitting side-saddle on a chair with my back to a horseshoe of eight artists; my face rested upon my folded arms on the chair’s back, while my body was partially twisted to face those drawing me.
For the following final 25-minutes of the evening I sat on the floor with one leg hooked beneath the other and my arms resting on a low ledge behind me. The pose took me to the end of my first booking at the Civil Service Club (no civil servants among the artists, mind you). Despite the occasional over-exertion, I had thoroughly enjoyed life modelling in its warm environment for an engaging group.
I’d begun with five 2-minute poses, continued with two 10-minute poses, and finished the first half of the session with three 15-minute poses. A fourth 15-minute pose after the interval preceded the two long closing poses, described above. Thirteen poses in three hours had allowed for plenty of variety, and resulted in some good quality art. I look forward to a second visit in mid-July.
After a good Monday night workout at a long-established venue, Wednesday evening brought the fresh anticipation that comes when modelling for the first time somewhere new. I’d been booked to pose for the life drawing group run by Ceri Ann Littlechild at Cockpit Arts, in central London.
Cockpit Arts is housed in a large building that accommodates many artists’ studios. I arrived early and was told by two chaps in fluorescent jackets that I should go to the first floor. No-one else was about, all the studios were shut, so I wandered around the warren of corridors till their creaky wooden floorboards led me somewhere promising.
At the far end I found a large room where Ceri Ann was preparing. It seemed the ideal space: light, airy, plenty of room for all six artists to work at easels, and a simple yet comfortable sofa for me to pose on, with my back to the wall. When all the expected artists were present, to the accompaniment of Ceri Ann’s mellow playlist, we began.
Three standing poses of 2-minutes, 3-minutes and 5-minutes provided the warm-up. I followed with 10-minutes sitting on the floor with my arms back on the sofa cushions, then two poses of 15-minutes: reclining on the sofa whilst propped on one elbow, and seated on the floor again with my face down on the sofa cushions.
After a break for red wine – wine! – we resumed with poses of 20 and 25-minutes. For the first one I sat on the sofa cushions with one elbow crooked tightly around a raised knee and my other hand on my head; for the last I sat on the back of the sofa, leaning down onto one of its arms.
For a relatively modest group, the artists had a wide range of experience and abilities, but everybody was friendly and engaging. Ceri Ann herself offered occasional words of advice but for most of the time we simply let the gentle music wash over us. I couldn’t have hoped for a nicer début. Feedback was upbeat, and I look forward to a return.
If I’m honest, when I got on the train headed for east London, I really wasn’t feeling it. Maybe it was a Monday thing… but then again, I seem to have had bookings every Monday for weeks now. Patchy sleep recently, perhaps, or an uninspiring morning and afternoon in the day job, possibly. Whatever the reason, halfway to the venue I decided I would work this one till every pose hurt, just to bring my focus back.
The easy part was feeling engaged with the group; I was back at Eastbourne House working for Adrian Dutton. It’s well established, and Adrian himself is so charming, accommodating and professional, that one would imagine all models here must feel invigorated to give the best they can. I was asked if I would like to work with a prop this time so, feeling in the mood, I opted for a martial arts stick.
I kicked off with 10-minutes standing, leaning onto the stick, then went with four more standing poses, quickfire 2-minutes, 1-minute, 3-minutes and 5-minutes. For the next quarter of an hour I descended to a kind of kneeling squat with arced arms, balancing on fingers and toes. If I had indeed meant to find hurt, then this was the pose where I achieved my goal, but it was OK.
Either side of our half-time tea break I was back posing with the stick: for 20-minutes before the interval, I was seated with it across the back of neck; for 10-minutes upon resuming, I stood with it across my shoulders. Both poses had their little discomforts but nothing painful – a slightly numb left arm was the only casualty by the end of the standing pose.
After brief poses of 2-minutes and 1-minute, we went with 15-minutes and 20-minutes to a finish. I lay on the floor for the first of these, twisted with one knee and one elbow raised, and then finished as I’d begun: standing, but by now content to keep it simple with one hand on hip and the other on neck. I’d posed myself back to life, and walked home achier but happier for it.
When Esther staged a Spirited Bodies group life modelling event at Bargehouse on London’s southbank back in November last year, Tatiana Moressoni kindly agreed to be official photographer. Spirited Sound at Bargehouse was a magnificent success, and Tatiana’s photos were a superb record, so Esther and I gladly repaid the favour by modelling together for her Camberwell Life Drawing group at The Cambria pub.
The session was billed as ~LONG Poses~ but in practice this simply meant no quick dynamic work. In the first half we would be posing for 15-minutes, another 15-minutes and 30-minutes. Most of our recent duo work has been cosy and gentle, so for variety we decided to start this one with us both standing and our hands upon each other, as if locked in some kind of struggle.
We were expecting it to be a lot easier to pick poses for this session because: (a) our backs would be against the wall rather than in the round; (b) we could make ourselves comfortable on The Cambria’s majestic red sofa that has served so many fine models. For the next 15-minutes, Esther remained standing with hands on my shoulders while I perched on the sofa’s front and wrapped my arms around her from behind.
Predictions of comfort proved to be premature, alas. Very early on in this one I began to slip back gradually from the firm edge, down into the soft cushions. The only way I could sustain the pose was to support much of my weight through my thigh muscles; hard going for quarter of an hour. At least our half-hour seated pose before the interval was soft, tender and well-supported for us both.
For the second half, artists were asked whether they would rather have one 45-minute pose or two 20-25 minute poses. Apparently they usually choose the latter so we had already got our first pose worked out for it – a kind of role-reversed Pietà. Needless to say this time they preferred the single pose. We stayed with our idea but it was a real strain for Esther. She did tremendously well, even with a break to stretch.
Our work had inspired some sublime art. This was the first time two models had been booked for an evening at The Cambria, and Tatiana’s social media marketing seemed to have struck a chord – after a period of varying numbers in attendance, this session attracted no fewer than 20 artists. We shared a celebratory bottle of wine and stories from London’s art rooms. It had been good to repay one success with another.
steve ritter 