Wrap-ln Down Under

From the looks of Little Bay, one thing was clear. Christo was there. The craggy Australian inlet nine miles from downtown Sydney lay beneath 1,000,000 sq. ft. of clingy, opaque, icky, sticky polypropylene plastic, looking like some improbable flotsam that had drifted in on a high tide, the last relic of a disposal civilization. The Aussies were taking it all in stride. Last weekend, some 2,500 of them happily trooped out to Little Bay and plunked down the modest 20-c- admission to see what this artist named Christo had wrought.

Christo Javacheff is a peripatetic Bulgarian whose art consists of wrapping things--big things. He has previously wrapped the Kunsthalle in Bern, a fountain in Spoleto and the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. For Christmas, he would like to wrap all the trees on the Champs Elysees, Paris permitting. Australia, however, can claim the distinction of having the first natural landscape to be wrapped.

It was tougher than most of Christo's projects. First, permission to wrap the area was obtained from the Prince Henry Hospital, which owns the land and will benefit from the proceeds. Then a task force of 60 volunteers labored for nearly a month over treacherous 80-ft. cliffs. They knotted and secured ropes, sewed the fabric together, and operated the 20 ramset guns used to fire staples into the rock face. The sound of the pounding surf below barred direct communication among the workers, so two-way radios were used. Midway through the project, a gale-force wind ripped up much of the work, necessitating repairs and alterations.

Opinions differ as to what it all means.

To some it suggests a collapsed circus tent, to others an agitated whale when the plastic periodically waffles out from under its 35 miles of rope. Says Sydney Art Critic James Gleeson: "It pleases the eye and it is mysterious. Our uncertainty as to whether we are responding to the beauty of nature or the beauty of art merely adds piquancy to the experience." Christo himself likes the different view of reality offered by wrapping. "Packaging--meaning to contain an object by itself in a most realistic way--exposes its commonness in a beautiful and relaxed manner." In the meantime, he is resigned to the fact that it will all have to be unwrapped in a few weeks. "It's not a very permanent world anyway," he says.

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