Our greenhouse planet spins through space, warmed by the Sun and surrounded by a vital mix of life-supporting gases – our precious atmosphere, the air we breathe. Part transparent and part reflective, the aerosolar spheres of Tomás Saraceno’s installation Drift: A cosmic web of thermodynamic rhythms 2022 catch and refract the light, modelling a new future of flight powered entirely by the energy of the Sun. Air as we know it did not exist when the Earth formed. Dora Budor takes us back to this early history in Origins I–III 2019 (illustrated), where volcano-punctuated landscapes are animated by occasionally erupting clouds of pigment. There is movement but no life, beautiful and unsettling – this is not air you would want to breathe.

We are usually unaware of the air we breathe, but might sense it when standing near an air vent. Nancy Holt draws our attention to the movement of air in Ventilation System 1985–1992/2022. COVID-19 alerted us to the capacity of air to convey invisible threats and heightened our awareness of the connected systems we depend on. Iraqi-British artist Jananne Al-Ani traces these relationships in her film Black Powder Peninsula 2016, which links oil and gas storage depots, sewage processing plants and power stations. Charles Page, Max Dupain and Wolfgang Sievers convey a sense of human capacity oscillating between wonder and unease when faced by the scale of mining, construction and industry. Mona Hatoum’s sculpture (illustrated) takes the shape of the Earth, the perimeter of each continent burning in orange-red neon as if predicting the systems we rely on are about to overheat and malfunction. In The Way Things Go (Der Lauf der Dinge) 1987 Peter Fischli and David Weiss set up a domino-like flow of experiments where one movement or process leads to another. Their film models not only aspects of how we got here but also the spirit of experimental play required to engineer a better future.

We share the air with one another, plants, trees and algae. Life and air have evolved together. Katie Paterson takes us on a journey spanning the ‘first forest’ and the ‘last forest’ to come via two small sticks of incense, the scents will be released daily at 10am outside GOMA, under Lee Mingwei’s Bodhi Tree Project 2006. Jamie North combines industrial ruins and native plant communities in twin columns (illustrated) . Carbon dioxide in, oxygen out. Rosslynd Piggott reveals each measure of air as precious, collecting the air of 65 different moments. Lloyd Rees records the connection between a fig and a small figure sheltering below its canopy. Rei Naito’s links those whose have passed on to all who share the air today in a tender memorial. Arrernte artist Albert Namatjira paints the ghost gums on his traditional Country, animating the landscape in glowing veils of watercolour. d Harding and Hayley Matthew continue Bidjara, Ghungalu and 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 via the intimate sharing of body and breath.

Sometimes what we cannot see makes us anxious. Ron Mueck’s oversized woman (illustrated) seems frozen mid-lockdown. Is she concerned, fearful or pensive? What is it that she can see but we can’t? The ‘invisible’ can encompass what we have chosen not to see, such as other’s suffering or lack of opportunity. Palawa artist Jemima Wyman builds a picture of global unrest and protest. Rachel Mounsey captures the Black Summer fires that swept through her home in the remote coastal community of Mallacoota on New Year’s Eve 2019. Thu Van Tran recalls the toxic defoliants sprayed over her country of birth, Vietnam. The lack of regard for people on the ground – their invisibility to those holding power – mirrors the First Nations experience of nuclear tests at Maralinga, South Australia, in the 1950s. Kokatha and Nukunu artist Yhonnie Scarce reflects on this legacy and evokes the rising blast of a nuclear explosion. Carlos Amorales brings thousands of butterfly and moth species cut from black paper gather to the gallery, a reminder of the fragility of life.

We live in times of great change, ambiguity and uncertainty, as if at the edge of a precipice. Jonathan Jones and Dr Uncle Stan Grant Snr AM ask us to pay attention, breathe deeply and sense the changing winds. Chalk, a humble tool for learning, is one of Tacita Dean’s preferred materials. She used it to create Chalk Fall 2018 (illustrated), here we see a section of cliff crashing into the sea, the land’s edge giving way to air. Ali Kazim paints a surging wall of dust as it sweeps across the ruins of ancient Indus Valley civilisations. Ideas can outlast towers of stone but require care and attention. Patrick Pound uses air, the most intangible of subjects, to ask how we build, hold and share knowledge. Entering Anthony McCall’s installation Crossing 2016, we are encompassed by a slow-shifting architecture of light. Air becomes solid, for a moment, and then what had seemed to exist evaporates.