Sia's breath to be auctioned off in Mason jar for charity

Her 2004 song Breathe Me launched Sia Furler’s international solo career. A decade later, the Australian singer is putting a jar of her breath up for auction in her hometown.

The former Zero 7 vocalist, whose latest studio album 1000 Forms of Fear topped the US and Australian charts in July, has bottled her breath for a movie quiz in aid of Adelaide film festival.

“Gorgeously and magnificently she breathed into a jar for us,” festival director Amanda Duthrie told the Advertiser newspaper, revealing Sia used the hipster’s container of choice, a Mason jar “with silver sealing wax so no one can accidentally open it.”

Duthrie added: “Whoever wins it will be able to break that seal – or just let it be.”

Sia’s solo career took off globally when Breathe Me was used in the final episode of the US show Six Feet Under. A songwriter behind the scenes for the likes of Beyonce, Rihanna and Katy Perry, she has since become known for her faceless performances – masking her features in paint, camouflage or face down on a bed.

It won’t be the first celebrity’s breath to be sold off. A jar supposedly containing an exhalation by Brad Pitt was put on eBay for £340 in 2010. Meanwhile a jar of cuttings from Elvis’s quiff went for £74,000 when his barber sold it in 2002.

Sia’s jar will be auctioned by quiz masters Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, joint presenters of Australia’s longest running film review show, At the Movies. News of their imminent retirement was met with dismay by fans in September.

The pair will film their final episode in December but not before lifting the hammer on Sia’s breath on 31 October, which opens for bids alongside two walk-on roles in Anthony LaPaglia’s new film, A Month of Sundays, filming in Adelaide in early 2015.