Jason deCaires Taylor

Early life

The only son of an English father and Guyanese mother, Taylor was educated in Kent with further studies at Camberwell College of Arts Institute of London, where he graduated in 1998 with a B.A Honours degree in Sculpture and Ceramics. Scuba diving from the age of 18, he became a fully qualified scuba instructor in 2002.

Career

Taylor's early work includes Vicissitudes, Grace Reef, The Lost Correspondent and The Unstill Life. All are located in the world´s first public underwater sculpture park in the Caribbean Sea in Molinere Bay, Grenada, West Indies, and situated in a section of coastline that was badly damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Taylor’s works create haunting, enigmatic underwater scenes, often depicting the mundaneness of life on dry land transported into an alchemic new environment. Instead of the entropic process typically associated with the ocean's corrosive tendencies, Taylor's pieces encourage organisms to grow and affect the surfaces of his creation. They are often commentaries on humanity’s relationship with the natural world and the need for conservation, decay and rebirth. The majority of his sculptures are based on living people who are life cast and whose phenotypical qualities alter over time as they slowly evolve from inert concrete to living artificial reefs. Taylor considers that he is "trying to portray how human intervention or interaction with nature can be positive and sustainable, an icon of how we can live in a symbiotic relationship with nature."

In 2009 Taylor relocated his practice to Mexico, where he achieved another milestone: the creation of the world’s first underwater museum. The Cancún Underwater Museum (Museo Subacuático de Arte, known as MUSA) holds more than 485 of Taylor’s submerged sculptures and 30 land-based pieces. It is located off the coast of Cancún and the western coast of Isla Mujeres. The project was supported and commissioned in 2008 by CONANP, National Commission of Mexican Protected Natural Areas (Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas) and The Cancún Nautical Association, officially opening in November 2010.

Works in the museum include individual installations implanted with live coral cuttings rescued from areas of damaged reef. Hombre en llamas (Man on Fire), cast from a local fisherman, stands towards the current with fragments of implanted fire coral in his head and torso,. La Jardinera (The Gardener) is a girl lying on a patio nurturing a variety of potted corals. Other works include El colecionista de los sueños (The Dream Collector), a man archiving messages found inside bottles that have been brought together by the oceans’ currents

La Evolución Silenciosa (The Silent Evolution)is the largest underwater collection of art. It was installed in MUSA in November 2010 and consists of 450 life-size cement people standing side by side on a barren patch of sand. The sculptures evoke both contemporary and historical narratives, forming building blocks which develop into a complex artificial reef for aquatic life to inhabit<ref. While the appearance of the collection underwater is of a crowd of people, from a distance it take the shape of an eye. The collection occupies over 420 square metres of ocean floor; the location was chosen to redirect visitors away from nearby natural reefs, providing these with the opportunity to regenerate.

MUSA is referenced as one of the largest and most ambitious projects underwater in the world.

By the end of 2013, Taylor had placed nearly 700 sculptures around the globe. Works completed in 2014 include Ocean Atlas, located in the Bahamas, the largest single underwater sculpture in the world at 5 metres tall and weighing 60 tons.

In 2015 Taylor installed his first London commission, The Rising Tide. “I quite like the idea that the piece sits in the eye line of the place where many politicians and so many people who are involved in climate change all work and make these damaging deals and policies, yet who are in this state of mad denial,” he said.

In 2016, Taylor was based in Lanzarote, Spain, woking on a new underwater museum, Museo Atlántico, which 1,000 ft (300 m) offshore. The museum consists of about 300 statues, some simply standing upright, others in situations such as a man lying on a funeral pyre or a group of refugees in a boat. The museum opened on 10 January 2017 and is open to scuba divers who are accompanied by museum guides.

In 2017, Taylor started scoping for the Australian Museum of Underwater Art, Great Barrier Reef, Townsville

Conservation

Taylor has gained worldwide recognition as one of the first artists to integrate contemporary art with the conservation of marine life. These underwater artificial coral reefs installations divert tourists away from natural coral reefs that are already suffering effects from marine pollution, global warming, hurricane damage and overfishing, thus providing the opportunity for the natural reefs’ rehabilitation.

Working alongside marine biologists, Taylor uses resilient, stable and environmentally responsive materials. He integrates a coral promoting neutral pH cement and propagates damaged coral fragments found in the ocean into preset keys in his figures. The structures also incorporate habitat spaces for marine life that will promote an increase in biomass of local ecosystems.

The sculptures are positioned in precise locations on the sea bed to avoid contact from strong currents and tidal patterns and are installed at the correct time for coral spawning to maximize their potential influence to the oceanic ecosystem.

Art writer, Dr David De Russo, writes that "the sculptures are a living evolutionary exhibition as nature colonizes, and the sea and tidal movement deform their appearance developing a platform which will promote the re-generation of marine life. They are a means of conveying hope and environmental awareness"

By encompassing bio-restorative and culturally educational properties Taylors work has been categorised as part of the eco-art movement. In 2010, his work featured in the campaign by Greenpeace for awareness of Global Warming ahead of the 2010 United Nations Climate Conference in Cancún.

Recognition

Major works

Taylor’s website includes images of many of his works. The most notable include: