Friday, January 11, 2013

'The Art Of The Brick'

Abandoned the Aunts during their 2-day stay at Sentosa. They could explore it on their own fine. There was nothing there I wanted to view, least of all the aquarium. I don't quite like aquariums. The one and only aquarium I've visited to-date in the whole world is Osaka's Aquarium Kaiyukan. In the same breath, I've no interest in any sort of marine theme parks, or bird parks or zoos. Didn't like Sea-World-anywhere at all. I was probably one of those kids who cried, was still dragged to a zoo, but threw a tantrum and refused to walk around. To my young mind, there was nothing more interesting than what I saw on television. Those animals jumped and were magnificent. The ones in the zoo, were not like that. The one zoo I was curious about, was the Chengdu Zoo, which I allowed on the itinerary because I wanted to have a look at the pandas.

When the Aunts emerged absolutely bored and amused by Sentosa, I took them to the one last museum they hadn't gone to. The ArtScience Museum, and for drinks and dinner at Marina Bay Sands so that they could have yet another bird's eye view of the city's cskyline. In the morning, they had dutifully went round Gardens By The Bay. I didn't bother joining them for that. Heheheheh. The main attraction at the museum or us was Nathan Sawaya's 'The Art of the Brick'. The artist used his favorite medium of LEGO bricks to place them into rather awe-inspiring 52 sculptures life-sized, big and small, as well as 3D pop art frames.

Totally appreciated the ideas behind:
LEFT- 'Sing' (used 8189 bricks) and RIGHT- 'Writer' (used 3210 bricks).


Having not visited ArtScience Museum for a while, it was good to know that the entry tickets now allow multiple same-day re-entries, and they've lowered the entrance fees, and gave discounts to Singaporeans. Finally. They were plain ripping off the public previously. Certainly not as affordable as the NHB Museums, one is still reminded that this is simply an event space, and each cent I contribute is towards enriching a private business entity who might not be very charitable. No difference from private art galleries, anyway.

I liked reading every little information card that accompanied the pieces. It was clear that the artist wrote all of them. Or at least had someone cleaned it up but retained the artist's strong voice. Informative, yes, occasionally humorous too. They share the spirit of LEGO, to inspire and motivate, and how the artist conceptualize each piece of work. Very impressed by the glue that held the structures together for transportation.

All very amazing. We lingered, and even walked back to favorite pieces to have a closer look at them. Heading there on a weekday meant little crowds and we were free to roam and stay. Of course we passed by the much acclaimed 6-metre long skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus Rex made all out of LEGO. I was probably more fascinated by this model than other ummm......real dinosaur skeletons... Heeeeeee. This one is very impressive. Apparently, it used 80,020 pieces of bricks. Fabulous engineering.

This skeleton should hang around till 14 April 2013. Go look!

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