North Terrace in Adelaide’s city centre is home to a slew of establishments offering a hub for culture of various types. There’s the Art Gallery of South Australia, the State Library, and the Australian Space Agency, to name a few. Along with the South Australian Museum that has just landed a brand new, unique exhibition.
When you think of the museum, you probably think of a bunch of old stuff. Well not this time around. From now until July 2023, the South Australian Museum is currently host to 11 large-scale LEGO models which creates a journey through an imagined future.
Relics: A New World Rises exhibition is set in the year 2530, long after the world has been abandoned by humans, and takes you to a world where LEGO minifigures have risen from the debris to build intricate civilisations in discarded and forgotten objects once inhabited or used by humans.
The exhibition’s is not only meant to be a visual and intriguing delight, but it also aims to remind viewers of the devastating impact that us humans have had on our environment.
Among the ‘relics’ are a clever group of personified LEGO inventors who have reverse-engineered a grandfather clock to build a time machine, a cryonics facility nestled inside a vintage refrigerator to keep minifigures in a frosty state safe from the effects of climate change, and a retro arcade with airlocks and elevators that connect a series of gaming machines to form a futuristic spaceport.
The world premiere of Relics: A New World Rises is brought to us by LEGO Masters winners, Jackson Harvey and Alex Towler; with Jackson commenting that the Relics exhibition was two years in the making and born out of a desire to create something that pushed the bounds of their imagination and storytelling abilities.
South Australian Museum Acting Director, Justine van Mourik says, “We have never staged an exhibition quite like this. No matter your age, there’s something for everyone to marvel at in these clever worlds.”
“Kids will love the number of minifigures and all the little hidden LEGO details in each of the relics, while the young at heart and anyone who’s ever owned a LEGO set or a LEGO minifig will appreciate the creativity, engineering and masterful design used to turn everyday items into one-of-a kind artistic creations of curious worlds with strange stories to tell,” Justine shares.
Relics: A New World Rises is now open and runs until Sunday 23 July 2023 at the South Australian Museum on North Terrace.