An optimistic view of life in 50 years?
The Guardians of Living Matter at Lowry, Salford, invites us to imagine a healing world powered by a super brain
Spent Friday as a helper on my son’s school trip to Deva Roman Experience in Chester, watching a class of eight and nine-year-olds seeing history brought to life before them by an actor dressed as an archer. Flamingo tongues for elevenses anyone? No, me neither, and I didn’t much like the idea of the sponge on a stick they used for their post-latrine ablutions either.
Then we marched, holding shields, swords, and led by an armoured centurion to the real life, excavated amphitheatre, where the kids were invited to attack the grown-ups with their, thankfully, soft weapons.
The main piece in this week’s edition of Stored Honey is also about using your imagination and a shared experience of putting yourself in a different time. Only this time, instead of 2,000 years in the past, we’re travelling just half a century into the future.
This is a free post for everyone but if you do decide to support my writing by becoming a paid subscriber then you will receive lots of extra content including a monthly guide to the best of what’s on in Liverpool, Manchester and across the North West, as well as Meet the Artist features, curators’ picks of 5 things to see in their venue and the Stored Honey podcast. Either way - thank you for reading.
Fantasy and real life blurs in Lowry’s latest installation
News publishers have found people switching off from stories about the climate emergency, not because they don’t care but precisely because they do. Overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation, and the feeling that they can do nothing to influence it, they prefer to disengage - swipe past the stories on their phones, ignore anything that pops up in their social media feed.
Is the same true of art? Do exhibitions that ask important questions about the future of our planet actually put us off thinking about it? Hopefully not - but it would surely very much depend on how the questions were posed.
Lowry’s new installation The Guardians of Living Matter by John-Paul Brown and Sophy King invites us to imagine a world that’s slowly recovering from climate disaster - and the knowledge that in this telling at least there is hope for the future gives you room to think about today’s challenges without panic. It’s a strangely comforting space, despite the idea that Earth is being managed by a sort of super brain called the The Oracle, made up of intertwined networks of low-carbon AI and mycelium - root-like webs of fungus. And there are no people, although there is evidence of scientists studying The Oracle, who have stepped away from their desks.
Perhaps the lack of humans is the reason why the world has been able to start its recovery so quickly - the installation is set just 50 years from now. That’s a short window for both climate disaster and healing, but with far fewer people on the planet there would be less to counteract.
We are the few humans in this scenario - taking the role of visitors to the facility. We pick up a pass from a security desk in the first room and head into the next space, entirely covered by a huge mural by Brown, The Tapestry of Future Past 2026-2076, which tells the story of how “the ancestors” discovered the alliance between mycelium and AI back in 2026. It shows how humans’ way of viewing the environment shifted dramatically through key points in history such as rivers gaining legal rights. Binary code permeates the work, and there are a lot of cats.
Next up is The Oracle itself, made up of mycelium grown on hemp rope in King’s space at Rogue Artist Studios in Manchester. Suspended from the ceiling, it seems almost alive, stretching out its chalk white spindly appendages above our heads.
The sculpture is lit by lights programmed by AI, based on a range of environmental data streams covering everything from the Moon’s distance from the Earth over time to air quality. Zoe Watson, Lowry’s contemporary curator, points out that, in real life, the collaboration between the mycelium and AI takes place in the shadows on the wall - a visual representation of alliance described in the story of The Guardians that is both illusive and pretty.
The scientists’ office is next - and again reality blends into the fantasy being told. Inside the imaginary workspace - weirdly comforting to discover that Post-It notes have survived the climate apocalypse - are materials Brown and King used to research their project, including a shelf of books.
The installation ends in a room where enormous tree branches bust through the plaster - the result, we are told, of The Oracles and The Guardians creating a portal into parallel worlds. The environment might be healing, but there still perils ahead.
The Guardians of Living Matter by Jean-Paul Brown and Sophy King is at Lowry, Salford, until Sunday 29 March.
See your work featured in Stored Honey
If you’re an artist, actor, theatre maker, curator, director or producer, I’d love to hear more about your work. You can submit details of an exhibition, performance or cultural event by sending details and an image to laura@lauracdavis.com. If you would like to take part in Stored Honey’s regular Meet the Artist feature, please answer the questions in this Q&A or if you don’t like filling in forms I can send you the questions via email.
In case you missed it
Opening this week
In Brendan Lyons’ art works, what appear to be typical objects are actually made of paint. A real cassette spools out tape constructed from paint. Toilet paper made of dried layers of paint spills out of a dispenser on the wall. You get the idea but seeing it in person is quite different as you start wondering what is real and what Lyons’ has constructed himself.
His work play with ideas of perception and representation - instead of traditional trompe l’oeil techniques of making 2D images appear 3D, the artist uses what would usually be a flat surface to construct three-dimensional objects.
Brendan Lyons: Discreet Discrete is at the Bridewell Studios Gallery, 101 Prescot Street, Liverpool, until Sunday 22 February. Opening hours: Thursday & Friday 12-4pm, Saturday & Sunday 11am-5pm. Free entry.
Now booking
Liverpool Improvisation Festival (LiF) is returning in May, bringing elite improvisers to the city while also showcasing local talent. The programme spans comedy, clowning, shadow puppetry, musical theatre and storytelling. It includes 18 live shows of which three are world premieres, and seven intensive workshops led by renowned international practitioners.
Ticket prices start at £9 - see the full programme here.
One for all the family
Liverpool’s Lunar New Year celebrations start on Saturday 14 February with a procession through the city centre led by the Liverpool Hung Gar Kung Fu Friendship Association, Pagoda Arts, and award-winning dance company Movema, along with members of the Chinese community, to showcase traditional costumes and performances.
The city’s main Chinese New Year celebrations, welcoming Year of the Horse, will be held on Sunday 22 February in and around Liverpool’s Chinatown. Activities will take place from 11am to 5pm on both days and festivities will feature family workshops, Tai Chi demonstrations, live music, street theatre, unique stage performances, a fairground, and food and craft stalls, plus firecracker displays and traditional dragon, lion, and unicorn parades on Sunday only. Full details here.
Thank you for reading the 166th edition of Stored Honey. If you enjoyed what you read then please hit the ❤️ button to help this edition get it shown more widely.
I’m off now to rub arnica into my battle scars.
Have a great week,
Laura
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