Andee Collard

My first thought: razor blades. Giant sheets of metal spattered in red. Bloody fingerprints on the surface. A violent image arriving in my mind, in a show that is otherwise subtle. My initial feeling isn’t fear exactly, but a flicker of unease — a reminder of the physical risk that sits quietly beneath industrial labour.

The Guardians of Living Matter, the ambitious new exhibition by John-Paul Brown and Sophy King, offers a refreshingly distinct utopian story. Opening at Lowry, it asks us to step sideways out of the anxieties of January 2026 and into a speculative 2076 — a future in which the climate crisis has not been ‘solved’ through human dominance, but eased through collaboration between mycelium and artificial intelligence.

Landscape as a genre has its roots deeply embedded in Romanticism and its associated concept of the Sublime, which emphasises the power and grandeur of the natural world. Through this lens, nature is seen as the primary source of inspiration, creating awe-inspiring scenes that can captivate and humble the human observer. The current exhibition of paintings by Rob Davies at the Williamson aims to explore this rich narrative of landscape.