No, it's not a cover-up, but student street art

Published on Saturday 2 May 2009 11:28

FIRST there was a gift-wrapped letterbox in McDonald Road. No one knew who'd done it, or why.

And then, suddenly, it was an entire street – swathed in brown paper, dressed with pink bows and gift tags bearing bizarre messages.

But only the early birds would have seen Rose Street in its full glory yesterday morning, with all the street furniture between Frederick Street and Castle Street under wraps. By 6am an over-eager street cleaner had already decided to "tidy it up", ripping the paper off several of the items.

But the identity of the phantom-wrappers has at least been revealed, after a group of Napier University students admitted to the stunt.

The first-year students started work at 5am yesterday, using 15 rolls of brown paper to wrap two benches, two lampposts, three bins, a manhole cover, a phone box and two bollards, all as part of a project to create art that the public could interact with.

Fortunately they were still on the scene when the street cleaner arrived and started undoing their work, and they remonstrated with him as he called his manager for advice. They persuaded him to leave some of their artwork behind until he returned at 11am, but by then he'd already unwrapped one lamppost, a bench, bin, bollard and the manhole cover.

The group had hoped that commuters would interact with the wrappers, breaking into the bins to throw away their rubbish, for example, but in the event only the cleaner dared touch the artworks.

One of the group behind the wrappings, interior architecture student Laura Watt, 19, said: "So many people stopped and read the things on the labels, it was nice. One of the workers said it looked so much better than it normally does, because normally the streets are cluttered and full of litter.

"Our lecturers gave us a task to create some sort of objects that the public could play with and interact with, so we could see how it changed their everyday lives. We just brainstormed and decided that we'd use everyday objects and make them a bit more noticeable. Also, because we're students, this was quite cheap."

She added: "We had a nightmare with the street cleaners at about 6am. It would have been better if he didn't rip down half the stuff because people would have had the experience of that whole bit of Rose Street being wrapped."

They are not the first artists to wrap outdoor items – the artists known simply as Christo and Jeanne-Claude are famed for wrapping the Reichstag in Berlin and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, among others. However, the students, who have been planning their stunt since December, say they came up with it during a brainstorming session, and had not even heard of Christo and Jeanne-Claude until they started researching their own idea.

It took a bit of preparation to get ready for the guerrilla wrapping raid, which explains the wrapped mailbox in McDonald Road on March 17, Ms Watt explained: "We did a few trials – the mailbox, we wrapped a bike, and then a bollard outside the Bank of Scotland. Somebody tried to wrap the button on a set of traffic lights, but she got shouted at by a group of pensioners."