Exhibition:

The Guardians of Living Matter

Exhibition dates

31st January - 29th March 2026

Opening Times

Tues – Fri  | 11.00–17.00

Sat- Sun | 10.00 – 17.00

Monday | closed 

FREE to visit

The Guardians of Living Matter is an interdisciplinary exhibition by artists John-Paul Brown and Sophy King that imagines an alternative and radical future.

The year is 2076. The climate crisis has eased, thanks to an extraordinary collaboration with our non-human allies. The convergence of new low-carbon artificial intelligence and natural mycelium networks - the underground fungal threads that connect and sustain plant life - has given humanity a second chance as custodians of planetary care.

But how did we get here?

Back in 2026, hope was hard to find. Governments, billionaires, and algorithms were failing the planet. Fear of technology and rising climate anxiety filled the air. Then something shifted. A community of the more-than-human emerged. Nobody knows quite how it began, but when the mycelium networks entangled themselves with AI, a new knowledge exchange was sparked.

Creating space for imagination and hope, The Guardians of Living Matter moves beyond climate grief and into futures of possibility. Visitors are invited on a journey of speculation and discovery, to explore what the world might look like when humanity and more-than-human intelligence come together.

The exhibition inspires us to imagine change and see hope as an active transformative force. At its centre is a vast, multi-sensory installation: a living sculpture of mycelium and AI. Surrounding it are a research lab and new works by Brown and King, exploring the entangled relationships between artificial and fungal intelligence. Together, these elements weave climate research with low-carbon AI prototyping, inviting visitors to consider futures grounded in care, imagination, and collective action.

Co-commissioned with Lowry's Artist Development programme as part of 'Developed With'. Supported by Henry Moore Foundation with additional support from University of Salford, the School of Digital Arts at MMU, HOME and Royal Exchange Theatre.