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The scent of ‘Last Forest’ is a similarly speculative proposition, born from an unrecognisable Amazon rainforest of the future, heavy with humidity, its famed biodiversity under acute threat of extinction. As the fragrance map displayed adjacent to the incense suggests, the last forest’s unique, sweet and bitter perfume is inspired by wideranging research — from Dr Ana María Yáñez Serrano’s investigations into the Amazon’s unique airborne and volatile organic compounds to field observations made by guides at the Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Ecuador. From this endangered living forest biome, the ‘Last Forest’ incense stick extrapolates a rich array of scents, ‘from the alcoholic fizz of guava trees to the fresh peanut-like aroma of the Earth’. 3 Paterson’s practice conceives acts of translation, with previous projects involving a map of all the dead stars, a live broadcast of the sounds of a melting glacier, a lightbulb simulating moonlight and a slide archive picturing darkness from different depths of the universe. To Burn, Forest, Fire continues the artist’s interest in staging intimate, poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environments, eliciting responses akin to the experience of the Romantic sublime. With a remarkable economy of form, Katie Paterson’s work gestures to an expanse of time beyond humanity, its aromatic tendrils of smoke conjuring the spirits of dead forests, urging us to consider how we might act, now and into the future. NM 3 Paterson, To Burn, Forest, Fire . Katie Paterson / To Burn, Forest, Fire (details) 2021 113 112 Shared Shared