Sculpture

Wrap It Up

Make your own artworks using textiles and found objects

30 minutes

The idea

Lots of things can be wrapped up from buildings to cars...

acovered card — A covered car © Sarah Sanders

Textiles can be draped, hung and stretched over objects. This makes new, mysterious shapes.

Artists like Christo and Jeanne-Claude enjoy using textiles in their work too. Look at this enormous artwork called Wrapped Reichstag.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin, 1971-95 — Christo and Jeanne-Claude *Wrapped Reichstag*, Berlin, 1971-95. Photo: Wolfgang Volz © 1995 Christo Source: christojeanneclaude.net

The Reichstag building is in Berlin and it's under all that cloth! It took 100,000 square meters of silvery fabric and over fifteen kilometers (about 9 miles) of blue ropes to wrap this up! The artwork was allowed to stay for two weeks in the summer of 1995.

What an incredible sight it must have been!

The plan

Man Ray, ‘L’Enigme d’Isidore Ducasse’ 1920, remade 1972 — Man Ray
*L’Enigme d’Isidore Ducasse* 1920, remade 1972
Tate
© Man Ray Trust/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2021

You are going to make your own artworks using stretched textiles and found objects.

A piece of fabric
String
Sticky tape
An object
Camera

Find an object and wrap it in fabric.
Secure the fabric by wrapping round the string and tape.
Photograph your object. How has it changed? What does it look like now?

You don't need to use soft fabric. You could use kitchen foil or plastic. How does this change how your wrapped object looks?
Try wrapping objects of all different shapes and sizes: a melon, a chair, a brush, a toy, or a vegetable...
After you have wrapped up your object, imagine wrapping up an impossible object. Draw what this might look like. How about the moon?!