Are you heading to Adelaide for the Easter holidays (or indeed, anytime before 23rd July)? Looking for something a little different and a little LEGO®like to do? RELICS: A NEW WORLD RISES is a new exhibition, now showing at the South Australian Museum.

The brainchild of LEGO® Masters Australia (Season 2) winners Jackson Harvey and Alex Towler, RELICS: A New World Rises is set in the year 2530, long after the Earth has been abandoned by humans. The exhibition takes visitors 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, reminding us of the impact that we have had on our environment.

Among the ‘relics’ are a marauding band of 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.

South Australian Museum Acting Director Justine van Mourik expects RELICS to be a big hit with visitors.

“We have never staged an exhibition quite like this,” she said. “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.

“We are incredibly excited to be welcoming another world premiere exhibition to the South Australian Museum, with RELICS arriving soon after the highly successful run of Six Extinctions.”

Co-creator Jackson Harvey said 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 using their love of LEGO® and storytelling abilities.

“The minifigures are the plastic puppets of our stories, and we’ve had so much fun constructing hundreds of narratives with them,” he said. “We hope people can find these stories and create some of their own.”

Co-creator Alex Towler described the relics, built over many months with his high school best friend, as “really weird and kind of wonderful”.

“This is a completely new creative endeavour for us, and we have been able to really give it everything we’ve got to realise its full potential,” he said.

“We have basically just been hanging out and building LEGO® together, which is half the fun.

“Kids are going to love the relics, but we’ve also created them with adults in mind, with the objects full of nostalgia and the stories we’re telling packed with references only adults will understand.”

RELICS: A New World Rises opened on Saturday 4 March and runs until Sunday 23 July 2023. Tickets start from $12 and are available to purchase here: https://events.humanitix.com/lego-relics

For more information, visit: https://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/event/RELICS

The show runs until July 23rd, so there is plenty of time to see the show. It even coincides with the dates of BRIXPO – The Southern Bricks major event on July 15-16. I hope to have a chance to see the exhibition over that weekend.

I’m quite excited by the look of these exhibits: Jackson and Alex are talented visual artists, and their integration of real world items with their LEGO Builds looks really exciting.

Have you had a chance to visit the show yet? Are you planning to? Why not leave your comments below, and until next time,

Play Well!