A couple of weeks ago, we went to see The Art of the Brick, an exhibition of Lego sculptures by Nathan Sawaya which is currently visiting Leeds.
Sawaya is an American sculptor who primarily uses Lego to make his pieces. As you enter the exhibition, there’s a short film where you get to hear more about Sawaya and how he works, before you continue into several rooms with different Lego sculptures. Each room broadly has a theme.
Some are quite abstract – humanoid shapes, with a single colour of brick. But there are also animals – many life size – and some Lego depictions of famous sculptures like Michaelangelo’s David, or of paintings like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Some sculptures are designed so that you can see inside them – most are hollow. Almost all of them are made using standard sized Lego bricks – there’s very few of the bespoke pieces you get in some official Lego sets nowadays.
At the end of the gallery is the ubiquitous gift shop, and also a huge pit full of Lego for little ones to play in.
For me, my favourite bit was the animals – the models are quite detailed, and are a bit like those you would see at Legoland.
It’s not a very big exhibition – we got around it in about an hour, and it cost us about £30 for the three of us. The exhibition has been on a world tour and only has Montreal, Marseille and Schenectady to go; it was in London last year. If you do decide to go, use the promo code AOTB10LEEDS to get 10% off. It’s around until the end of next month.
