Bonnie Mercer (b. 1978, Melbourne) is an internationally-renowned sound artist, composer and musician who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. With a career spanning over twenty-five years, Mercer has ensured that she is in demand at home and abroad both as solo performer and highly-respected collaborator. Mercer’s distinctive and instantly recognisable style is earth-shatteringly loud, transcendentally hypnotic and experimental while grounded in rock forms. Although certainly psychedelic, Mercer is equally capable of euphoric improvisation, thundering rock riffage and glacial beauty, often all at the same time.

This is evident in Mercer’s work as a founding member of Grey Daturas (2001-2010), a band celebrated for exhilarating feedback-drenched live performances. Their heady mix of drone, minimalism, psychedelia, free-jazz and noise engendered a global following of devoted enthusiasts. A correspondingly punishing tour schedule included multiple excursions to the USA, Europe, New Zealand and Japan. They also performed extensively throughout Australia and released three full-length albums. When geographic alignment allows, Mercer still performs in Breathing Shrine, her duo with fellow former Datura Robert Mayson, now based in NYC.

Mercer is an active participant in a range of international and local collaborative projects. Since 2012, she has been a member of Dumb Numbers, the LA-based vehicle for Australian musician and filmmaker Adam Harding. Other participants in this revolving cast of musicians include members of the Melvins, Dinosaur Jr, Best Coast, Magic Dirt and Jesus Lizard.  In 2013, Dumb Numbers was the featured support for My Bloody Valentine on their North American tour and in 2015 played five shows opening for the Lemonheads on the West Coast of the USA. Mercer has performed at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas (2015) and was the recipient of an Australia Council ‘International Pathways’ grant to tour the USA with her band Dead River in 2013. She was regular guest guitarist with Taipan Tiger Girls (feat. Ollie Olsen) including for their 2017 MMW (Melbourne Music Week) Grand Organ performance at the Melbourne Town Hall.  Other past and current Melbourne-based projects include Down Under, Little Desert, Dead River, the Dacios, Hospital Pass and Michael Beach.

Mercer’s constantly evolving solo work explores sonic possibilities for the electric guitar using feedback, distortion, effects and noise with hallucinatory, hypnotic results. Her recordings have been included on compilations in Australia and North America, and in 2018 Melbourne label Psychic Hysteria released Mystic Decade, a ten-year retrospective of Mercer’s solo recordings.  The long list of international artists Mercer has opened for includes Shellac (USA), Sleep (USA), Earth (USA), Boris (Japan) and Grouper (USA).  

In 2018 Mercer was a section leader and conductor for Rhys Chatham’s A Crimson Grail, scored for 100 electric guitars and performed at the Sydney Festival. That same year, she was commissioned by Cross Yarra Partnership to produce an artistic response to Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel (trains) construction. This included collaborative compositions with Time for Dreams, sound artist Lisa Rae Bartolomei and motion graphics artist Sar Ruddenklau, presented as an immersive audio/visual performance at ACMI for MMW 2018. Mercer collaborated again with Bartolomei and the Starlings Spatial Sound Collective on multichannel sound art works as part of Site & Sound at McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin in February, 2021.

Always experimenting with new modes of expression, Female Cop Recordings (2020) found Mercer embracing traditional song forms and, for the first time ever, singing. This new direction revealed a voice reminiscent of Hope Sandoval and Thalia Zedek with another surprise – the piano, a connection with Mercer’s past life as a piano teacher.  She described this compelling new material as ‘dirges…recent distant memories that I’ve been unable to extract until now,’ signaling a continued evolution in her creative output.

2021 was a significant year for Mercer, with the release of two split 12-inch records: one with Tom Lyngcoln on Melbourne’s Nice Music label and another with YLP on the UK cult label Downwards Records. That same year, she was awarded the inaugural Bakehouse Music Bursary for women and non-binary artists.

Mercer collaborated with Carmen-Sibha Keiso on a compelling audio/visual project for Light: Works from Tate’s Collection at ACMI, Melbourne. The artists created a thoughtful response to Lis Rhodes’ seminal 1975 film installation, Light Music, showcasing their innovative engagement with this influential work.

In 2023, Mercer captivated audiences with a breathtaking performance at the Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne, Australia, as part of the prestigious LA Presents series. To complement this significant event, Liquid Architecture commissioned an extensive longform retrospective that delved into the depth and evolution of Mercer’s remarkable career, highlighting key milestones and notable artistic contributions.