Air

With Birch and Moriarty’s duet, the new musical composition presents childhood songs shaped by time, memory, experience and the architecture of the human body. Moreover, the interweaving of two distinct cultural inheritances gives birth to a new melodic form that explores cultural contact and exchange, testifying to the entangled narratives of Aboriginal and Christian missionary histories in Australia. It is a highly emotional and musically intense experience for both the singers and the audience, and yet also, as Beer notes, ‘a very natural way to use our most fundamental instrument’. 2 Beer’s work has consistently explored the musicality of our environment and how we feel its vibrations and reverberations through form and across time. From a foundation in musical composition, fine art and cinematic theory, he has developed a multidisciplinary practice that lays bare the hidden acoustic potential of objects, bodies and architectural environments through live performance, film, sound and sculpture. Inspired by the remarkable acoustic possibilities of the Sydney Opera House, Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me) I & II builds on research from the artist’s Resonance Project 2007–ongoing, which investigates the spatiality of sound, and how it might be thought of as a sculptural presence. Through the intimate exchange of music and memory, Oliver Beer’s video installation considers how those same principles might be explored through the human body. In the immediacy of the exchange of breath, saliva and song lies the myriad ways in which we sustain each other. NM 2 Beer, artist statement. Oliver Beer / Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me) I & II (still, detail) 2018 ‘The effect is raw, visceral and almost unbearably intimate, with the performers’ bodies becoming resonant vessels, transformed into acoustic spaces.’ 92 Shared