My chest expands and contracts,
the metal vibrates faintly under my fingertips
as silverpoint lines gradually form a
dense, shimmering field.

From Breath unfolds through a sustained exchange between breath, body, the materiality of silver and the surface of the canvas. The work centres breath as a shared, life-giving force, enacted through a giant, hand-crafted silver flute.

In this first iteration, performed privately at Brand X Studios in Sydney, I played the flute for one hour per day over seven days, moving around a square black canvas placed on the floor, drawing its tip across the surface as I exhaled. Each movement leaves a fine trail of silver in its wake—the trace of a breath made visible in the silverpoint line. Each breath travels through the silver flute, vibrating outward, producing sound. Breath, body, sound, movement and material become inseparable.

The flute is a simple tube with a single embouchure hole. Without keys or mechanisms, sound and variation emerge entirely through breath and the shaping of the mouth.

The work develops through repetition. Circling the canvas, I return again and again to the same path. Subtle variations register over time. What unfolds is a durational, ritual act—physical and attentive—where breath becomes both measure and generative force.

As the drawing forms, the flute is altered. Its tip wears down through contact with the canvas, becoming softened and rounded. The instrument is not only a tool but a participant in the work, undergoing its own quiet transformation.

The work draws on a lineage of breath passed to me through my mother, a classically trained singer, who taught me how the voice begins deep in the body. This inheritance is deeply embodied—held in muscle memory, diaphragm and pulse. Breath is an invocation: an ongoing act of calling the self into being.

What remains are three interrelated forms: a large-scale silverpoint drawing, a sound recording, and the flute. Each holds a different register of the same process—visual, sonic, material—together tracing a durational, embodied encounter shaped by breath.