The Guardians of Living Matter at Lowry

A new, immersive exhibition, The Guardians of Living Matter, has landed at Lowry, pitching us forward to the year 2076 and into a future where the climate crisis has eased – not through techno-utopia or billionaire heroics, but through an unlikely alliance between artificial intelligence and the mycelium networks running beneath our feet. Artists John-Paul Brown and Sophy King use that premise as a springboard for a hopeful exhibition that invites visitors to consider futures grounded in care, imagination and collective action.

The show rewinds to 2026, a moment defined by burnout, collapsing systems and a growing distrust of governments, algorithms and billionaires. Out of that mire, the artists conjure a turning point: fungal networks and low-carbon AI entangling, learning from one another, and opening a new channel of knowledge exchange. Visitors are invited on a journey of speculation and discovery, to explore what the world might look like when humans and more-than-human intelligence come together.

At the centre of the exhibition is a multi-disciplinary, multi-sensory installation – a living sculpture formed from mycelium and low-carbon AI. It anchors the leap to 2076, linking the imagined future back to the turning point of 2026, when mycelium networks and emerging AI systems first began exchanging knowledge. Surrounding the installation are a research lab and new large-scale works by Brown and King, all exploring the entanglement of fungal and artificial intelligence and the possibilities that emerge when they collaborate.

This isn’t sci-fi escapism – it’s a thought experiment rooted in climate reality. Against anxieties about runaway tech and environmental collapse, the exhibition pries open a different story: collaboration over conquest, kinship over control. It proposes a kind of second chance, earned in how we choose to relate to other forms of intelligence.