大象传媒

The British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor anchors hundreds of life-sized concrete statues to the seafloor. He invites visitors to put on a tank and dive down to explore a seabed museum containing vignettes of faceless figures taking selfies, a line of bankers with their heads in the sand and a circle of cement children holding hands. Taylor's work creates an eerily beautiful effect akin to stumbling across a scene that’s been frozen in time.

In the azure waters of the Caribbean and the Canaries, fish swim amongst statues that Taylor has handed over permanently to the sea, faces morphed by a palette of corals that give the sculptures a life of their own. Each and every statue is moulded from a real person from the local community. Hunting for people to cast, Jason frequently trawls the streets and social media, foregoing classically slim models with perfect skin, as pock-marked, wrinkled faces attract more marine life and heavier bodies are more able to withstand the forces of the sea.

Obsession with documenting the fragile animal world has taken artists Olly and Suzi into some of the most extreme and inhospitable seas on the planet.

These artists dive with leopard seals and great white sharks, don drysuits to brave sub-zero temperatures and overcome seasickness and numb hands, all before they start the physical art-making. Drawing underwater, they emerge to roll out their paper on an iceberg or deck of a ship, capturing what they call “ground truth,” their experience of encountering wildlife in its natural habitat.

Amazingly, Suzi is terrified of the water (she wouldn't even get into a swimming pool if she had the choice), but says her laser-like focus on capturing each encounter distracts her from this fear of the deep.

Travelling all around the world, Peter Matthews spends up to 11 hours a day drawing while swimming in the ocean.

Matthews nails paper onto a piece of old plywood, gathers his favourite pens and submerses himself and his paper beneath the waves. Treading water, he enters a trance like state, his breathing mirroring the sea. Hours later Matthews finds he has a drawing, a stream of consciousness, inky lines drawn in blues and blacks, words scattered across the page.

Matthews plans carefully for this feat of endurance, eating nuts and fruit and preparing a fire on the beach for when he gets out of the water. But the seas are unpredictable and harsh; Jellyfish, rip tides and storms are a regular part of his artistic life.