ImmerseLDN

Having just enjoyed a hit season in Paris, this somewhat vaguely titled exhibition attraction comes from the Balloon Museum, an internationally touring series of inflatable art based exhbition that last rocked up a few years back with a show near Tower Hill. Euphoria: Art is in the Air is a completely different show but it would once again appear to be based around tactile, interactive inflatables frpom the likes of Martin Creed, AA Murakami, Camille Walala, Karina Smigla-Bobinski and Cyril Lancelin. We’re told to expect a ‘playful world of colour, movement, sound and unexpected encounters, where artworks are not simply there to be observed — they are made to be experienced’. Basically it’s 10 rooms a cool weird inflatable stuff, aimed at all ages.

This review is from 2025. Wundrful World of Christmas will retrun for 2026 at a new location. Although it sounds like the core experience will be the same, it will now feature ‘a brand-new sparkling village - the Elves’ Playground, filled with twinkling light installations, gentle fairground rides, festive food and drink, Christmas market stalls and more.’ Long gone are the days when a British grotto meant a quick sit on the knee of a boozy-smelling man with an obviously fake beard in the backroom of a mid-tier department store. In the age of immersive theatre, London’s grottos have spun off into all sorts of esoteric forms that now typically involve a lengthy ‘adventure’ prior to finally meeting Old Saint Nick, whose knee you are very definitely not allowed to sit on because of woke. The oddly named Wundrful World of Christmas is billed as an immersive experience rather than a grotto, and indeed in its native Australia that may be fair enough – do they even have grottos in the land of beach Christmas? But here it is basically a posh grotto, and probably London’s biggest this year, with an expensive marketing campaign and fancy location in Borough Yards. It begins with us ‘boarding’ what my notes say is a flying lift, which – as conveyed via computer generated vista we see out of its ‘windows’ – is piloted by a slightly fractious group of elves all the way to the North Pole. There we encounter… more elves, who are hanging out in a cluster of rooms so Christmassy they...