Climate change, AI and finding hope in artistic activism

AI meets nature in a new interdisciplinary exhibition at Lowry from January which sees artists, John-Paul Brown and Sophy King, look beyond climate grief into a future of possibilities.

It is 2076 – the climate crisis is fading, the Earth is in recovery, humanity is rebuilding, and the world is breathing a sigh of relief on its second chance at life. Beneath it all stretches the biggest communication network humanity has never seen, a tangled chimera of fungus and A.I. curling deep beneath the earth.

‘The Guardians of Living Matter’ invites visitors to speculate on this transformed world, from the heart of a multi-sensory research lab that weaves climate research with artistic imagination.

It is an uplifting concept that inspires us to imagine change and see hope as an active transformative force.

Ahead of the exhibition’s launch Leslie Kerwin talks to artist, John-Paul Brown about his inspiration for the project.

What triggered your interest in the climate crisis?

John-Paul: “Prepare for a 20 year answer! I never even considered recycling, walking instead of taking the car, anything like that, until maybe I was 24 or 25. One of my first jobs was working freelance in photographic studios, and they would have these huge room sets. They would build a kitchen or a bathroom, and I’d photograph that over the course of several days. And then once it’s approved, all of that goes in the bin. So that was my first time understanding waste.

“Then I went travelling in the Maldives, shooting a yacht… There was a school of fish washed up, a rubber dinghy shredded and loads of trash. We cleaned up about 12 bags of trash – and this is the most remote place I’ve ever been in my life! That kind of thing really does a paradigm shift in your brain.

“So when I came back, I stopped flying. I stopped driving and changed my bank account. I did all these things”.

Can you tell us a little bit about the exhibition and the techniques and materials you’ve used?

John-Paul: “The exhibition is responding to the climate in general and trying to envision another world in the future. Myself, Sophy King and other artists are collaborating on this project, ‘The Guardians of Living Matter’. We are very much about sustainability, and if not sustainability, then the recovery of materials that would otherwise perish, or be burned, or not be recycled in any way whatsoever.

“There are several companies that will get credited in this exhibition because of materials they’ve been generous enough to donate.

“[It’s about] not only what materials we choose to use, but what we’re going to do with it post-exhibition, like how much of this is an artwork that we keep, how much of this is material that we can use to become another piece of artwork in the future”.

With the exhibition, one thing that really did stick out to me was the huge emphasis on mycelium and linking it to AI – what was the thinking behind that?

John-Paul: “Mycelium is the biggest organism on the planet. There’s a whole connected system that’s a knowledge exchange with trees and roots and other soil. It’s essential to life on the planet, and it has its own language.

“If we as humans could listen to what that network was saying, how it communicates with trees, how they have this nutrient exchange, maybe we could have that knowledge and take over our planet in a better way, and maybe AI can do that for us”.

With the growth of AI, do you believe that it’s going to impact physical art?

John-Paul: “I kind of think it’s a bit outdated already. I did a random test when the first A.I. generators were coming round, and so I sat there blank minded with a text to image generator, and I didn’t have a clue what I wanted it to come up with. So I typed in Mark E. Smith and L.S. Lowry drinking Guinness in Manchester.

“Mark E. Smith had his hair pretty good and his jawline pretty good. But L.S. Lowry was monstrous. He looked like a Francis Bacon painting. I was horrified.

“The very next day I got my bike, I cycled to Manchester Southern Cemetery, and. I found L.S. Lowry’s grave – ‘Mr Lowry, I’m really sorry about this, I put your name in A.I.. It’s not worked out well.’

“Six months later, I did it again. This time it was a picture-perfect photograph. So, I found that kind of interesting, but I think it’s not been very creative. I think the bubble’s burst on that. A.I. just has a different skill set”.

I suppose it’s quite different working individually compared to collaborating with someone. How does that shape up the the creative process?

John-Paul: “Me and Sophy have collaborated for a few years now. First and foremost in Parallel, which is a network that brings together artists and scientists. So I’ve worked with several different scientists – some astrophysicists, someone who works on The Hadron Collider, material scientists, and these knowledge exchanges are really good, really important, really healthy, because everyone in life gets bored of their own jobs. So artists like collaborating with people who really give them a stimulus and a sense of, ‘Oh, I never thought of it that way’.

“So that’s how me and Sophy got to know each other. And we work really well together in idea sharing, and we’ve done some curatorial work together as well. But when it comes to two people making the same piece of artwork, then it is a process. It is an ebb and flow, getting to know someone. I think I’d find the experience really difficult with someone else”.

What do you want people to be thinking or feeling after the exhibition?

John-Paul: “I think I’m pretty aware that a lot of people have high anxiety about climate change, and safer artificial intelligence and technology. So, I hope we create a space where they can digest both of those things in a way that they don’t feel anxious, and it can leave them in the headspace of being able to enter the conversation again.

“I think there is so much happening right now, in this country and abroad – there’s just too much doom. There’s too much gloom. It’s all so heavy. Everyone’s having a bad time. Everything’s getting more expensive. And so I’m hoping we put on a show that brings some people together and makes them be in that space, even if it’s for an hour, and leave feeling like ‘ohh, actually, not everything’s bad.’”

The Guardians of Living Matter is at Lowry, Salford from 31 January to 29 March 2026.