Jason deCaires Taylor MRSS (b.1974) is an award winning sculptor, environmentalist and professional underwater photographer. For the past 16 years, Taylor has been creating underwater museums and sculpture parks beneath the waves, submerging over 1,100 living artworks throughout the world’s oceans and seas.

His permanent site-specific sculptural works are predominately exhibited in submerged and tidal marine environments, exploring modern themes of conservation and environmental activism. Over the past 16 years, Taylor has been one of the first to consider the underwater realm as a public art space and is best known for his numerous large-scale underwater “Museums” and “Sculpture Parks”. Taylor gained international recognition in 2006 with the creation of the world’s first underwater sculpture park, situated off the west coast of Grenada in the West Indies. Moilinere Bay Underwater Sculpture Park is now listed as one of the Top 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic. The park was instrumental in the government declaring the site a National Marine Protected Area. Taylor has gone on to produce over 1,100 public terrestrial and underwater sculptures worldwide, which are visited by thousands of visitors each week. 

Discover here the pieces currently exhibited at Chelsea Barracks

One of the many wonderful elements of Taylor’s work is the multi-faceted layers of appreciation. Paloma can be seen simply as a celebration of innocence, a capturing of a young child’s mood that will be immediately familiar to any parent. However, this sculpture was created as part of a wider piece called Plasticide, which is perhaps one of Taylor’s most overtly political work to date.

Originally commissioned by Greenpeace as a collaboration piece, it was a rallying cry to consumer goods companies, plastic packaging producers, authorities and policy makers to urgently work together to stem the flow of plastic into our oceans. Taylor has seen first-hand the growing mountains of plastic in the sea. The presence of plastic is a visceral reminder of humankind’s impact on our environment: jarring, destructive and almost indestructible. Through Plasticide, Taylor wanted to bring this message back to our cities: “Our oceans and the marine life which inhabits them, can’t stomach any more plastic.” Over 90% of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs. Plastic is found in a third of UK fish and it is calculated that shellfish eaters are ingesting up to 11,000 plastic fragments in their seafood each year. We have a diet rich in plastic.

The artwork was installed in the public thoroughfare outside the National Theatre on London’s Southbank. Like Taylor’s previous London exhibit, The Rising Tide, Plasticide was viewable for only a short time in a high-traffic location. The work was subsequently used by Greenpeace and relocated at the entrance of Coca Cola head quarters in Central London to raise awareness of the company’s destructive practices. A percentage of all sales will go to support marine preservation charities.

2016, Edition of 3 | Whitemarble Jesmonite | 95 cm (Height Head to Toe) x 55 cm wide x 38 cm | POA

Striding across Mulberry Square, this life-sized man captures the sensation of scuba diving through of the artist’s myriad underwater sculpture gardens. Just as the figures set within these vast public marine spaces gradually grow coral protrusions and fuse into their seabeds, this piece was created in collaboration with nature.

The male form is cast in jesmonite, an ecologically considerate resin, then set into a tank full of a copper solution. As an electric current is passed through the liquid, organic spires begin to grow from the limbs in the same manner that coral grows. As such, no two of the edition of three are identical - Taylor intentionally abdicates the completion of the piece, allowing the effortless aesthetic of mother nature to take charge.

The piece would suit either an interior or exterior installation, while noting that in exterior settings the fine detail of the copper spires may change colour or weather. Rather than this being problematic, the ongoing mutability of the piece is the guiding principle behind its inspiration.

A percentage of all sales will go to support charities involved in marine preservation.

2022 Edition of 3 (each unique) | Copper, Jesmonite, Pigments | 190 cm x 100 cm x 100 cm | POA

This sculpture’s underwater counterpart can be found within the Cyprus Pavilion, a floating forest that is part of the Museum of Underwater Sculpture Ayia Napa. The theme within this part of the underwater museum is rejuvenation that is encouraged and supported by the young generation. Children are encouraged to rewild their imaginations as well as their surrounding environment. Restoration Girl is curled up asleep, dreaming of a better future. She is a symbolic seed that needs protection and nourishment to regrow a thriving forest in the future world.

Marine life in the Mediterranean Sea has been seriously depleted over the last 20 years.  The area in which the museum is sited was previously a barren stretch of sand within a marine protected area. Taylor’s installations of inert pH neutral materials will attract a wide variety of marine flora and fauna.  A percentage of all sales will go to support charities involved in marine preservation.

2020 Artist’s proof | White concrete | 90 cm height x 165 cm x 125 cm | POA

Generation Restoration Boy is part of the same sculpture series commissioned for Taylor’s Museum of Underwater Sculpture Ayia Napa in Cyprus, a submerged forest of 93 pieces consisting of sculptural trees and interacting human forms.

The sleeping child is curled up asleep, dreaming of a better future. He is a symbolic seed that needs protection and nourishment to regrow a thriving forest in the future world. Marine life in the Mediterranean Sea has been seriously depleted over the last 20 years.

The area in which the museum is sited was previously a barren stretch of sand within a marine protected area. Taylor’s installations of inert pH neutral materials will attract a wide variety of marine flora and fauna.  A percentage of all sales will go to support charities involved in marine preservation.

2020 Artist’s proof | White concrete | 90 cm height x 165 cm x 125 cm | POA

This piece was created for the launch of the inaugural Barracks Sculpture Trail and represents a new way of sculpting for Taylor – a process called “liquid coral”.  Just as the blue figure towards whom she strides is a fusion of the artist’s intent with unbridled chemical reaction, she too was created in a union of the controlled and the chaotic.

The original underwater figurative sculpture is one of 35 people walking towards a 30 meter long, 4 meter high wall symbolising the point of no return.  This artwork installation, Rubicon, is part of Taylor’s Museo Atlántico located in Lanzarote, Spain.

The pH-neutral concrete woman was set in a cold water tank, into which was poured molten aluminium.  The geometric shapes and voids were created by this cooling process, forming beautiful and organic forms in metal.  The result is a fusion of the industrial and the natural, an echoing of the way that coral grows on Taylor’s underwater sculptures in his international marine installations.

The materials reflect the artist’s focus on sustainability, the green concrete uses residual industrial materials, the aluminium is recycled.  A percentage of all sales will go to support charities involved in marine preservation.  

2022 Edition of 3 (each unique) | Cement, aluminium | 178 cm x 100 cm x 100 cm | POA