Oliver Beer | British Art Show 9

By Victoria Woodcock

Inhale a selection of new exhibitions all focusing on the importance of the air that we breathe.

The idea of singing and breathing together is expanded in Oliver Beer’s video-performance work Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me) that is currently on show at Manchester Art Gallery, as part of British Art Show 9 (until 4 September). Pairs of performers create unusual duets by joining their lips in a tight seal, creating a single mouth cavity, and singing compositions based on their earliest musical memories.

“With nowhere else to go, their lungs are emptied out through each other’s noses, and, at the meeting point of the two voices, a third voice appears,” says Beer. “After all this time apart, for me, showing this work again is a cathartic return to being able to exchange air and ideas and music with each other.”