24. April 2025
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Museums & Exhibitions

Frameless London

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Frameless London

31 GBP
Frameless London
4.6

Rating

 4.6/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Four very interesting and different concept rooms
  • Good location
  • Long duration of the four main shows
  • Nice cafe and shop

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Not suitable for families
  • Fifth room rather limited experience

Immersive art experiences are becoming more and more popular. First of all, the technology to drive them and the creators who do qualitatively good content feel to become more and more available. Secondly, I simply feel it is an experience, which perfectly sells in the today’s world of social media and thus gains much more attention than it actually should get. One of the newer exhibitions of that kind is Frameless in London, opened in 2022. During my April 2025 visit to the British capital, I had a visit.

Frameless London – Location & Admission

Frameless is located in the rather new Marble Arch Place, a small shopping and recreational spot at Marble Arch. It is right across the Northeast corner of Hyde Park. The closest Underground Station is Marble Arch, served by the Central Line. There are numerous bus connection there as well. Right in front of the exhibition, there is Stop H of Marble Arch Station / Edgware Road, served by bus lines 6, 7, 23, 36, 98, and night bus lines.

The exhibition is opening daily. Most of the weekdays, it opens 10:00 to 19:00. On Friday, times are 11:00 to 22:00 and on Saturdays, 10:00 to 22:00. You can book a ticket in advance, which will lead to reduced admission. These tickets come with time slots. I would not enter Frameless in London later than two hours before closing – otherwise you risk to miss part of the experience. The walk-in price is 31 GBP for adults. If you book online in advance, it is 28 GBP. However, they also add a processing fee to your booking. A surcharge of 6 GBP is taken for a flexible ticket, which works the whole day, irrespective of time slots.

 

Frameless London – The Visit

From the ground floor reception area, you take escalators (or, in case of mobility issues, elevators) to down to the exhibition area in the basement. There are four key exhibition rooms at Frameless in London, all coming with an individual style and also different technical settings. The shows are looped seamlessly and take between 20 and 25 minutes. They are made in a way that you can in fact enter (and leave) anytime, which is also allowed. In addition, there is a fifth exhibition, which feels like a “bonus room” and was also significantly shorter. Here is the overview of the experiences.

The exhibition rooms are all entered from some sort of “main hall”. There is no specific order in which you can or should visit the shows. All of them come with a combination of visual and audio experience. The central area also gives you background information about the original pieces of art, which inspired the digital creations.

 

Beyond Reality

I would see Beyond Reality as the key part of Frameless London. Not only that the room is likely the largest, it also comes with a full video experience. The ceiling and parts of the floor close to the screens are mirrored, there are two mirrored pillars in the room as well. The experience features art by Salvador Dali, Edvard Munch or Hieronymus Bosch and thus a rather wide range of ages. Most of the displays are rather colorful as well so that this place was also very popular among children during my visit.

 

Colour in Motion

The second room we visited was Colour in Motion. The idea of that gallery is that famous pieces of arts are spread over the floor in snippets. With people walking along the floor, they more and more are put together to the original artwork. Naturally, this is also a place for families. The ceiling is not used for this gallery though. The paintings featured are by Vincent van Gogh or Claude Monet, for example.

 

The World Around Us

The world around us takes you to to very different sceneries in life in different eras. For example, it takes you to Venice at The Great Canal Canaletto (by Giovanni Antonio Canal) or to Vesuvius in Eruption, painted by Joseph Wright of Derby. The room uses the floor and the ceiling for projections, there are no mirrors or similar. The original paintings are put into motion, so that you also feel to explore London streetlife in the late 19th century with John Atkinson Grimshaw’s Reflections on the Thames. I really liked that part of Frameless London. The Venice and London scenes were my favorites of the whole visit.

 

The Art of Abstraction

The last gallery we visited was The Art of Abstraction. It uses rather modern arts like paintings from Wassily Kandinsky or Paul Klee. The room does not project them on the walls, floor or ceiling, but solely on thin net panels, which are spread through the room. You are not allowed to touch them for obvious reasons. To me, this room did not work out that well. It is also not really suitable for young visitors.

 

Right Before We Wake

Right Before We Wake, designed by Claire Luxton, is not part of the core exhibition. One hint that the room was originally not meant as an exhibition space for Frameless is that it even contains a door to the bathroom (which is not used). The emergency exit in that room is as disturbing as the fact that it was a popular playground for kids during my visit. Only three walls are used (while the fourth wall was rather a storage for chairs of the cafe. The graphics is fascinating, but overall, I did not really enjoy the show. The total time of that display is also significantly shorter than the one you spent in the other rooms.

 

Frameless London – Services

Next to the main hall, there is a cafe. It is on basement level, so that you have to have a ticket to enter it. There are some upgrades linked to these service you can book when you pre-book the tickets online. Additionally, there is a really nice souvenir store you can enter any time or right before you leave Frameless London. The staff was really friendly and helpful. During my visit, they had issues with their ticketing system. They thus recommended to buy tickets online via another service (GetYourGuide), which overall worked very well. There is free WiFi throughout the exhibition. You can leave your jackets and luggage at the wardrobe (for a small fee).

 

Frameless London – My View

Overall, I really liked Frameless London. I also liked the flexible concept and the duration of the shows, so that I would also prefer it over places like ARTE Museum Dubai. However, in my point of view, only two rooms are suitable for families. I would not recommend going there with smaller children. The admission is high, but feels just reasonable. I also felt that the technology is still not good enough to project all kinds of pictures in that size – the resolution is a bit too low in some parts of the museum.

 

Graphic Arts on Flyctory.com

Under the Graphic Arts tag, I sum up all kinds of paintings, graphics and prints:

 

Travel Reviews – London Top Pick!s

Here are all my Travel reviews related to London, which lead to a Top Pick! rating:

 

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