WA Maritime Museum (Custom Web Article)

By , 14 Jan 2022

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Built by Ryan 'The Brickman' McNaught's team of LEGO master builders, Brickwrecks: Sunken Ships in LEGO Bricks tells stories of different shipwrecks from all over the world.

Here until 30 January, at the WA Maritime Museum, this spectacular LEGO exhibition took over 1600 hours and more than 153,000 LEGO bricks to create amazingly detailed models.

Many of these models are interactive in their unique way.

From precariously tilting ships to exploring underwater sites in augmented reality as a marine archeologist, Brickwrecks brings another dimension to educating children about these historical events.

Sneak Peek | What to expect

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When & Where

Everyday until Sun 30 January 2022 @ WA Maritime Museum

Tickets
Standard $15
Concession $12.50
Junior $12.50 | Under 5 - Free

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Prices are exhibition only.

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Read on with the kids!

There's a Q&A with Ryan 'The Brickman' McNaught about Brickwrecks: Sunken Ships in LEGO Bricks.

Also, there's a fun minigame to check out!

Image Credit: facebook

Q & A | Learn more about Brickwrecks!

This Q & A with Ryan "The Brickman" McNaught was from WA Museum's Members Day. For early access to exclusive events and ticket offers, why not sign up? Find links below.

How did you become The Brickman?

Back in 2008, I was working in my normal IT job and doing LEGO for fun, I had some opportunity to do some work with the LEGO company.

I needed to set up a website, emails and all those bits and pieces…and thinking what I should call that website.

Of course, most of the cool websites names were already taken so I had to come up with something...

And so I came up with the idea of Brickman!

So that’s how it came about... what’s that 13 or 14 years ago now.

What's different about this exhibition compared to your previous ones?

They're very different LEGO models for us because not only are they based on real things, we don't get to use our imagination in these scenarios.

But what that allows us to do is... tell the story of something that really happened! Which is an incredible thing and really important.

It's a great challenge with LEGO bricks so we had a lot of fun with all of these LEGO models.

Particular the ones where you can tip a ship over and all the cool things like that.

We had a heck lot of fun making these models.

What was your biggest build in the exhibition?

I think the Batavia was probably the biggest build, it took a couple of months in hours, which was a lot of hard work. And particularly because we had to make sure to get it accurate.

Which of the shipwreck stories had the biggest emotional impact on you?

Look there’s probably a couple, I guess the Rena is a great example because it’s in my lifetime and I got to see the environmental devastation that it caused and I remember it in the news and it sort of triggered things in me. So that was something from a closest to me perspective.

But the Batavia itself is such an incredible story and forms the recent part of Australia’s history at least.

It tells the story of who we are and where we come from and the hardships which, particularly, in recent history times that Australia has had to go through. When I think about those builds and what they mean and what impact they had on us, they’re probably the 2 for me that struck a chord the most.

Where do you get your inspiration?

I’ve been doing this for a little while and I’ve built a lot of LEGO so I’m always looking for things that I love to build or try my hand on. Or something along those lines.

I pretty much used to get most of my inspiration from when I was lucky to travel places. Having a terrible memory, I always write things down in my notebook or on my phone.

Sometimes you get inspiration from watching television or reading a book, whatever the case may be, inspiration comes from LOTS of places!

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