Aussie Lego Masters take over Auckland Museum — a brick at a time

Lego fanatics Alex Towler and Jackson Harvey were crowned the winners of the Australian reality TV show Lego Masters in 2020. Brick by brick, their Lego exhibition has been drawing crowds over in Australia — and now they're heading to Aotearoa, reports Seven Sharp's Rhiannon McCall.

The South Australia Museum is 168 years old and has exhibited its fair share of hallowed artefacts, exotic specimens, and distinguished artworks. So, what does it take to be the most attended exhibition at this esteemed museum?

Lego.

RELICS: A New World Rises is a retro-futuristic Lego exhibition created over the ditch, and it's now taking over Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.

The exhibition was created by childhood friends Alex Towler and Jackson Harvey, winners of Lego Masters Australia, and features "relics" — random hunks of junk with intricate Lego worlds built inside.

Harvey is a visual artist, and Towler is an environmental engineer.

When I met the pair, they were dressed head to toe in black and rocking Dr. Martens boots. They have two of the most impressive heads of hair I have ever seen, and I felt as though I was immersed in a Pantene commercial set in a hipster Wellington café. That is, if the café featured highly detailed Lego worlds inside rescued pieces of junk.

I had to ask: "Does having luscious hair help with Lego building?"

"It sort of gets in the way a bit," replied Towler. "You might see our hair in the exhibition — it might be wedged between some bricks."

All jokes aside, Harvey and Towler's exhibition is breathtaking and features around 2000 mini-figures, each placed with thought and care to tell a different story.

The longer I spent in the Lego world the duo created, the more narratives I discovered. The relics which house the Lego worlds include a tacky 1980s jet ski, a 1940s jukebox, and even a salvaged grandfather clock from the 1700s.

"We scoured all of Western Australia for the stuff in RELICS," said Towler.

"It was really important for us to find them from salvaged sources and second-hand sources or the depths of Facebook Marketplace."

RELICS is set in an imagined future when humans have left the planet due to environmental decline, and Lego mini-figures have taken over the relics left behind.

All the Lego used in the exhibition was second-hand, and the pair want to start a conversation about sustainability and the permanence of objects which outlive us.

"It might seem strange to talk about sustainability when you use plastic as a medium, but people have a connection with it [Lego] beyond multiple generations," said Towler.

"A piece of Lego from the 60s will fit with a piece of Lego that was made today."

A lot of time and effort has gone into creating the sophisticated exhibition. Harvey and Towler spent a year designing and preparing the exhibition, with work involving initial sketches, building, and electrical wiring.

When it comes to Lego building, Harvey and Towler prefer to be spontaneous and let their creativity flow freely.

"It's much more fun to build without much direction," said Harvey.

Immersing themselves full-time in the world of Lego has changed the way they look at the world.

"Now, every time I look around, I wonder if what I see I could build Lego into. Which is quite a strange way to see the world," shared Harvey.

"We'll be walking down the street, and both look at a building and start to imagine how you might build that building out of Lego."

RELICS: A New World Rises is on at the Auckland Museum until Sunday, October 13.