CURIOSITY: Building Breakthroughs in LEGO® Bricks
Opening Tuesday 3 March 2026 at the Discovery Science and Technology Centre, CURIOSITY: Building Breakthroughs in LEGO® Bricks lands in Bendigo like a brightly coloured intellectual explosion.
Equal parts engineering lab, art installation and childhood fever dream, this major collaboration with Bendigo Art Gallery transforms humble LEGO® bricks into towering feats of science and imagination.
And yes, the exhibition includes a 7.5-metre rocket, a life-size Mars Rover Perseverance and the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity.
Building blocks for the future
There’s a generation right now growing up with rocket launches live-streamed to their phones.
They’re watching NASA fire up the Artemis program, seeing astronauts return to the Moon, hearing talk of Mars not as science fiction but as a destination. Closer to home, Australia is building its own space capability through the Australian Space Agency, quietly laying the groundwork for satellites, launch systems and a new era of local innovation.
For kids in 2026, space isn’t distant. It’s happening. now And before anyone earns a flight suit or designs a propulsion system, they usually start somewhere much smaller — often on the living room floor, snapping together plastic bricks and building a rocket that leans slightly to the left but absolutely feels like it could reach the stars.
That’s where LEGO® becomes less toy, more career starter kit.
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The Rocket That Ate 460,000 Bricks
Front and centre stands a replica of NASA’s Space Launch System: 7.5 metres tall, constructed from more than 460,000 LEGO® bricks, complete with integrated lighting and sound. It took 563 hours to design and build. It’s magnificent.
Nearby, a life-size Mars Rover Perseverance and the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity sit poised as if ready to trundle off across a red-brick Martian landscape. The detail is obsessive. The precision is surgical. The joy is contagious.
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Meet the Seven Bobs
Then there are the minifigures. Seven identical LEGO® “Bobs,” built at wildly different scales — from a 256cm giant (x64 scale) down to a 2cm half-scale miniature.
It’s both hilarious and strangely philosophical. Scale changes everything. Perspective changes everything. Bob remains Bob.
There’s also a vast periodic table rendered in LEGO®, intricate bridge models demonstrating structural principles, spacecrafts from around the world, and enough engineering inspiration to nudge at least a few future architects, astronauts and inventors toward their calling.
And if none of that grabs you? There are infinite six-brick duck combinations to attempt. That’s not whimsy. That’s mathematics disguised as fun.
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The Brickman Comes Home
At the heart of it all is Ryan ‘Brickman’ McNaught — one of just 23 LEGO® Certified Professionals in the world and the only one in the southern hemisphere.
Born in Shepparton and educated in Bendigo, McNaught’s story is almost as compelling as his builds. Former Chief Information Officer turned professional LEGO® artist, he launched his career after constructing a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Airbus A380 in 2009.
From a suburban garage operation, he now leads a team of more than 30 craftspeople producing record-breaking installations, life-sized vehicles, touring exhibitions and global commissions.
Most Australians will recognise him as the resident judge and brick oracle on LEGO Masters Australia. But here in Bendigo, this is something more personal. It’s a homecoming.
Jessica Bridgfoot, Director of Bendigo Art Gallery, describes the exhibition as a showcase of “imagination, creativity, and exceptional skill,” noting that LEGO® as a medium is intergenerational and universal — a rare cultural language spoken fluently by five-year-olds and engineers alike.
“The medium of LEGO® is both intergenerational and universal, sparking wonder and encouraging creativity across all ages. It invites us to experiment, to dream, and to build new worlds,” Jessica Bridgfoot said.
Alissa Van Soest, General Manager of Discovery, says the exhibition speaks to the centre’s core purpose: making science fun, accessible and inspiring. Translation: you’re allowed to touch things. You’re encouraged to build things. You’re expected to be curious.
“CURIOSITY speaks to the very heart of what we do at Discovery, making science fun, accessible, and inspiring for everyone. This exhibition invites everyone to be curious, to question, and best of all to create. That’s the kind of learning that sticks, and the kind of experience Discovery is all about,” Alissa Van Soest said.
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Accessibility, Innovation and the Bigger Picture
One of the exhibition’s most important — and quietly powerful — features is the integration of LEGO® Braille, delivered in partnership with Vision Australia. It ensures visitors with low vision or blindness can engage fully with the displays, building a genuinely inclusive experience.
The exhibition also marks the first in a series of off-site events presented by Bendigo Art Gallery while it undergoes its major redevelopment. When complete, the Gallery will include a second-level blockbuster exhibition space, a new learning centre, theatrette and a Traditional Owner Place of Keeping for Dja Dja Wurrung cultural materials.
In other words, while one building transforms, another becomes a laboratory of imagination.
Why This Matters
It’s easy to dismiss LEGO® as nostalgia. But walk into this exhibition and you realise something deeper is happening.
This is STEM education without the acronym fatigue. It’s art that explains physics. Engineering that invites play. Mathematics disguised as ducks.
It’s also regional Australia flexing cultural muscle. Bendigo isn’t just hosting a touring exhibition — it’s welcoming home one of its own and demonstrating that world-class creative engineering can be born in Shepparton, schooled in Bendigo, and launched — quite literally — into orbit.
And if you find yourself staring up at a seven-metre rocket built from plastic bricks, wondering whether you should have paid more attention in physics class — well, that’s curiosity doing its job.
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Exhibition Details
Location: Discovery Science & Technology Centre
7 Railway Place, Bendigo VIC 3550
Dates: Tuesday 3 March – Sunday 29 November 2026
Tickets: Included with general admission. Pre-booking recommended via discovery.asn.au
Supported by the City of Greater Bendigo.
Bring the kids. Bring your inner engineer. And maybe allow extra time — because once you start building, it’s surprisingly hard to stop.
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