CANBERRA — Imagine the year 2130: humans have left Earth, and the stuff they abandoned — fridges, Beetles, grandfather clocks, a 1940s Wurlitzer — has become housing stock for thousands of plastic citizens. That is the playful dystopia of RELICS: A New World Rises, which opened 19 September 2026 at Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG) and runs through 31 January 2027.
The ticketed show is the work of Perth friends Jackson Harvey and Alex Towler, winners of Channel Nine’s LEGO Masters in 2020. Across more than 15 large-scale installations, they fold mostly second-hand bricks and about 2,500 minifigures into vintage objects, rewarding visitors who look around corners and down hallways for Easter eggs.
Objects as architecture
CMAG’s listing and ABC News’ opening-day report map the set pieces: a refrigerator remade as a cryogenic wellness resort; a Volkswagen Beetle powering an “underground energy revolution”; a grandfather clock reverse-engineered into a time machine; a claw machine turned space port. Harvey’s favourite relic, he told ABC, is a 76-year-old antique Wurlitzer jukebox from the 1940s.
“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. But they have built new communities inside all the old objects and junk that we’ve left behind,” Harvey said. Towler put the method more bluntly: “We just like looking at cool stuff and figuring out what little plastic people will do with them.”
Nostalgia, salvage, and not following the booklet
Towler told ABC the build leans heavily on salvaged parts — “mostly second-hand Lego” — and that Lego is “only a small part” of the experience: stories, object nostalgia, and a scavenger hunt for detail share the floor. In a Canberra Times preview, he described the intended clash: “that really derelict, run-down, dystopian future aesthetic and the colourful and bright LEGO. Squishing those two vibes together gives you something that is really weird and kind of wonderful.”
The creators frame the show as a brief against the instruction booklet. “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. That’s the message,” Towler said. Harvey and Towler also scheduled creator meet-ups around the opening, including a signed-book session for A New World Rises: Tales of a LEGO Future on opening Saturday.
Who it’s for — and what to know
CMAG markets RELICS for ages 0–99: part sculpture, part design, part storytelling, neither a conventional white-cube survey nor a standard brick display. The LEGO Group does not sponsor, authorise or endorse the exhibition. Low-sensory sessions are listed on the venue’s event partners; general tickets are sold via CMAG (published rates include general, concession/student/member, child and family options).
For Australian museum culture, the opening lands as a rare mainstream-accessible installation that still asks visitors to slow down and read objects as ruins. Whether the salvaged-object method travels to other state galleries will be the next test; for now, Canberra has the premiere run through late January.
This article draws on ABC News (19 September 2026), CMAG’s exhibition page, and The Canberra Times preview. Quotes follow those outlets.