Photo by Chrisjtse via Flickr
If you miss the good old days when the peak of your creativity was building anything out of Lego, then Art of the Brick is the perfect exhibition to rediscover your childish, arty side.
If you can ignore the hordes of children stopping every five seconds to admire the genius of artist Nathan Sawaya, you’ll have the opportunity to get lost in works you could only have dreamed of creating yourself as a child.
Sawaya takes Lego to a whole new level, not only with his portrayal of classic masterpieces such as The Thinker by Auguste Rodin and Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, but with installations trying to portray various sets of human emotions and conditions.
Subjects vary from a small but appetisingly bright red apple, to a perfect small-scale reproduction of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, which had all the children around me begging their parents for pet dinosaurs for Christmas.
The original pieces by Sawaya vary from thoughtful to funny to downright depressing, yet his approach to art only proves once again how there are different ways of being creative and even objects usually linked to childhood games can become a medium to analyse the meaning behind actions that appear ordinary to the untrained eye.
Mind you, you’ll still feel compelled to look around every now and then to make sure you don’t step on any Lego – too many painful past encounters made me very careful when surrounded by those treacherous little things.
Advance booking is advised as large groups of visitors come from all over London and the UK to see it, but have no fear: The Art of Brick is on at the Old Truman Brewery until January 4, 2015.
