We share the air — with one another, plants, trees and algae. With each breath, we take in oxygen created by these companions. Air and life have evolved together on Earth.

Katie Paterson takes us on a journey spanning the ‘first forest’ to exist and what might be the ‘last forest’ to come in To Burn, Forest, Fire 2021. Via two small sticks of incense, the scents of each forest are released every morning at 10am outside GOMA, under the branches of Lee Mingwei’s Bodhi Tree Project 2006. This sacred fig is a descendant of the iconic tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment.

The twin columns of Jamie North’s Portal 2022 combine industrial ruins and native plant communities. Carbon dioxide in, oxygen out: together, these plants work in synchronicity with our every breath. Rosslynd Piggott reveals each measure of air as precious in her work Collection of air 2.12.1992 – 28.2.1993 1992–93, which assembles the air of 65 different moments. Lloyd Rees records the connection between a fig and a small figure sheltering below its canopy: two living beings sustained by air. Rei Naito’s tender memorial, pillow for the dead 1998, links those who have passed on to all who share the air today.

Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira paints the ghost gums of his traditional Country, animating the living landscape in glowing veils of watercolour. In Australia, some of our most sacred galleries have been created over tens of thousands of years in a process linking breath, body, earth and generations. d Harding and Hayley Matthew continue Bidjara, Ghungaluand Garingbal traditions by exhaling ochre over objects, creating silhouettes that continue those layered onto ancient rock galleries. Oliver Beer explores the meeting of different cultural inheritances in Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me) I & II 2018, prompting us to wonder at what can be created through the intimate sharing of body and breath.

Feature image: The leaves of the Bodhi tree that grows outside GOMA, April 2023 / Photograph: C Callistemon, QAGOMA