Art of the Brick - London

On Tuesday 30th September, I paid a visit to the Art of the Brick exhibition that has reached London on its world tour.

Luckily for me, I went on a schoolday afternoon which meant that it was pretty much empty and I could get as close as I wanted to the displays.


The exhibition is broken down into themed areas, where the artist Nathan Sawaya, can show similar pieces.  These range from mosaics to human expression, as well as a dinosaur.

The mosaics are quite impressive, but there is software, such as PicToBrick which allows you to create your own from digital images as you will see at various Lego shows, still good work mind.

The large human sculptures are probably what Nathan is most famous for, such as these:

These are impressive builds with basic bricks, with great attention to the human form.

Also on display is this big dinosaur, about 80,000 bricks which are not glued like some of his other pieces.  It is suspended from the ceiling to aid in display.

I completed the exhibition in about 90mins and that was at a nice sedate pace, you could probably do it in an hour, but if you want to savour the pieces then I would recommend a little longer.

As part of admission you get a free audio guide, where Nathan explains his creations.  The comments are quite brief, so you won't get bored.  There's a couple of videos that are also worth a watch.

If I was a kid again, I would probably be a little bored.  Except for the dinosaur, which kids will love and the play area at the end of the exhibition, the pieces are aimed at older audiences, it just so happens that it is all built from Lego.  With that said, I liked this and would give it a score of 7/10, as its not something you see everyday and Nathan has built some wonderful creations.


Finally, a word of caution in the giftshop, the standard Lego sets, which you can buy at Argos/Amazon/Lego stores etc are marked up by a 100% in some instances.  I saw the 2014 Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar, which has a RRP of £29.99, on sale at £60.....

If you want a more family Lego experience, check out these two upcoming shows:

The Great Western Brick Show in Swindon at STEAM

or

Brick 2014 in London's Excel centre