brick wonders

Brick wonders

This exhibition consisted of sculptures made solely made of Lego bricks, these sculptures all range from about 30cm to about a metre with most of the sculptures featuring natural environments and geographic monuments such as pyramids, Chinese pagodas and temples all made entirely of Lego. Held in the Herbert art gallery this exhibition also consisted of two dimensional pieces that are constructed to look almost like 8-bit paintings on a very large scale. All of the pieces are made by several artists who combined all of the monumental pieces into a stop motion animation which follows a photographer as he travels through various monuments.

Notable pieces

All the monuments within this exhibition are worth mentioning as notable pieces as they are the larger and more detailed of the pieces. These include:

London bridge

This features the first bridge built to span the river Thames at its peak in which it was incredibly busy as there were no other means of crossing without the aid of a boat in addition to the residential homes that were also visible on the bridge. This sculpture shows the bridge in all its glory highlighting the bustling city very well.

Great pyramid of Giza

Showing the pyramid still under construction this large display highlights the epic scale of the build to create the giant pyramid and also the harsh and arid working conditions that the workers had to endure while the pharaoh remained safety within the shade.

African savanna

Showing a high density of wildlife in comparison to the amount of space in which they are spread this showcases the diversity of plant and wildlife within the African savanna, most of this display feature more of an arrangement of Lego foliage than a display of structure. Spanning about just under a metre this display is not one of my favourites.

in addition to the monuments there were other sculptures featuring other natural and manmade phenomenon such as the hoover dam and Niagara Falls that were not included within the monuments section as they were of much smaller scale, however the largest display featuring an airport was very impressive as it was indeed very large and also very detailed taking up at least two metres in the smallest dimension.

Favourite

 London bridge

My preferred piece is a replica of London bridge as it most appeals to my personal taste of historical British architecture. This piece depicts London bridge at its busiest showing just how crampt the space was as it was heavily built upon leaving only about twelve feet of walking space from the two story buildings on either side in addition to many small boats traversing the river Thames below. I love how concentrated this piece is how it focuses the bustling streets into a smaller space, also the use of woody colours and greys to show the structural differences and variation in single colours to show textures such as brickwork.

Least liked

The smaller pieces were less impressive as they were only around 30cm and consisted of rooms such as a surgical operating room in addition to a syringe and a pill, they were the simplest of the pieces the surgery however did achieve its goal of appearing as though it could have come out of a drama by depicting a surgery in progress from a bird’s eye angle with a surgeon and figure watching from the outside but lacks the intended intensity as it is made of Lego. The issue stated is the only real issue with the piece other than that it is just as impressive as the rest of the sculptures.