Frameless

Frameless is an immersive art exhibition. And what is that you might well ask. It consists of four rooms with lighting displays of famous artworks beamed onto all four walls, as well as ceiling and floor. Needless to say just projecting a painting onto a wall would be a little tedious. But here paintings are dissected, appear in parts, flow onto walls from above and below, are deconstructed and rearranged, all to music. It is honestly very impressive and engrossing. A proper experience. And actually worth the quite exorbitant entrance fee - I did double check that I was buying one ticket, not two!

It also doubles as a mother and toddler unit. The place is packed with little ones who are quite entranced by the lights and shapes all around them. (Or in Juliet's case, a little scared by them!)

And yes I was indeed going with a friend of mine and her soon-to-be two year old. I had never heard of the place, but obviously there is a mum's network of places to take one's little one, especially on a wet summer's day.

The first room has mirrors around the edge of the floor and on the ceiling, which was a neat addition. Started with some Dali - surrealism seems apt for this.

Max Ernst, in mirror image

Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights - thankfully not one of his more hellish paintings was chosen for this purpose

My friend Elaine with little Juliet, enjoying the floor.

This is actually a detail from a Gustav Klimt painting

But Munch's The Scream was a little disturbing when enlarged

And back to the Dali

The second room was basically impressionist paintings. The quirk here is that the paintings started as just dots and shapes and built gradually into the works with which one is a familiar. And the other quirk is that the floor was always covered in what looked like leaves, and if you walked along it the "leaves" would whoosh away from your path. 

The third gallery covered a few paintings of places. It was rather restful.

The Canaletto was particularly effective as it surrounded you as if you were really in St Mark's Square, and it brought you gradually closer to one end .

But the restfulness of this gallery ended with the sounds of a storm. Very effective, but frightened the life out of little Juliet. I watched the end on my own!

The last gallery was devoted to abstract paintings, and unlike the others had panels throughout the room so you can be surrounded by the images. To be honest this made them much more interesting than the real things!