Since mobile phones began ruling the roost, London's come up with some resourceful purposes for its redundant telephone boxes, from book swaps to tiramisu shops.
Another such reimagining was Degard's Visionary Brit Museum, an itsy art gallery which opened in 2023, just outside the railings of the British Museum on Great Russell Street. Some say it's London's smallest art gallery.
Now the Visionary Brit Museum — renamed the Visionary Brit Exclusive, and selling original artworks from £100 upwards (inaugural exhibition: 5,000 years of Visionary Art Spirit Animals) — is joined by three more miniature operations, each occupying a K6 phone box on the same stretch of Great Russell Street. The revitalised phone boxes (each has also been cleaned, treated for rust, re-glazed and fitting with new automatic locks and camera systems) are:
🔮 The Fortune Teller: A vending machine selling original (and relatively affordable; starting from £10) paintings of Tarot cards, lucky numbers, magic minutes, lucky cat paintings, feminist mediumship from the 18th century and magic seals that capture the enchanting mystery of art. We're told there were seven sales in the first 24 hours of its opening, so this one's going to prove popular.
✨ The Aura photo booth: Take a photo of your own aura, or adopt a celebrity's instead, selected from an ever-expanding library of celebrity auras. In all honestly, we're not sure how this one works, but it sounds fun.
🪞 Visionary Brit 'Mirror': This phone box will host an ongoing series of shows relating to objects in the British Museum itself. The inaugural show asks: "What magic is in the Rosetta Stone?"
Each of the phone boxes is open to buy or view works from 10am-5pm daily (they're locked outside these hours), although of course you can peek through the windows 24/7.
If this kind of quirky, hand-built setup is your cup of tea, perhaps you already know about Novelty Automation, a Heath Robinson-esque amusement arcade in Holborn.
Find out more about the four phone boxes, and purchase artworks, on the Visionary Brit website.
