In short:
A new exhibition has opened at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, depicting Lego people living in tiny worlds inside iconic items, from cars to pianos to jukeboxes.
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The artists say the exhibition is about "doing something differently".
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RELICS: A New World Rises is open until 2027.
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It's the year 2130, humans have left Earth and Lego minifigures have moved into the belongings we've left behind.
At least that's how friends Jackson Harvey and Alex Towler imagined the future, while they spent years creating a whimsical, wonder-filled world for their exhibition RELICS: A New World Rises.
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"The characters of Relics live in a world that's set in the not-too-distant future … where humans have left the planet for reasons that are left vague.
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But they have built new communities inside all the old objects and junk that we've left behind," Harvey explains.
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Across more than 15 large-scale installations at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, tiny communities have moved into the wreckage humanity left behind.
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A fridge has become a cryogenic wellness resort, a grandfather clock has been reverse-engineered by a band of inventors into a time machine, a claw machine has become a futuristic space port.
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"Lego has become [the] majority of our lives.
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It's lots of fun though — it changes the way we've looked at the world," Towler says.
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"We just like looking at cool stuff and figuring out what little plastic people will do with them," he says.
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Vintage classics house intricate worlds
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The pair created this new civilisation from old stuff.
"
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This exhibition was built on a majority of salvaged parts.
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It's mostly second-hand Lego," Towler says.
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Some of the objects were harder to find than others, the pair say.
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And all the detail that surrounds the larger objects help to build the story and the world.
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"We've got a lot of really unique objects in the exhibition — some of them are really hard to find," Harvey says.
"
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Harvey and Towler say there are many stories woven into the millions of small pieces and 2,500 minifigures making up the exhibition.
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"Lego is only a small part of this exhibition," Towler says.
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They say the longer you look at it, the more you'll uncover.
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"There's lots of little Easter eggs and hidden stories that you can only find if you look around a corner and down a hallway or behind a shelf," Harvey says.
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They've built it.
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Now you can come
"This exhibition is at its core about not following instructions, doing something differently," Towler says.
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"Lego pieces aren't meant to fit in the front of a VW Beetle, but if you have a V-Dub and you have Lego and you squish them together, you can figure it out.
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The exhibition is designed to appeal equally to serious enthusiasts, families and anyone who's never clicked a little plastic brick in their life.
RELICS: A New World Rises is a ticketed exhibition on at the Canberra Museum and Gallery until January 31, 2027.
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The Aporia