It probably all started at Portofino in Italy, where,
in 1947, pioneer Italian diver Dario Gonzatti lost his
life. Honoring his life, there now stands a bronze
stature of Christ, eight feet tall in only 30 feet of
water. It was created by Italian sculptor Guido
Galletti and is a popular attraction for scuba divers
and free divers alike.
Galletti's mold bore two more statues. One is at
the surface in Grenada's harbor, in remembrance
of the death of a crewmember when an explosion
and fire hit Italian liner Bianca C. in St. George's
harbor in 1961. Still on fire, it was towed into deeper
water, where it sank and is now a popular dive site.
The other is in the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, 25 feet deep in the water off Key Largo. www.floridakeys.com/keylargo/pennekamp.htm
In 1990, another 10-foot-high statue of Jesus was
placed 30 feet deep, between the Mediterranean
islands of Malta and Gozo, to commemorate the
visit of Pope John Paul II to Malta. There's a much
smaller statue of a dolphin placed at the entrance
to an underwater cave in the Medas Islands, a popular
diving spot in Spain.
What started as an initiative to deter dynamite
fishing resulted in an underwater destination for
a pilgrimage. In 2010, a 12-foot-tall representation
of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus was erected on
the seabed at the Bien Unido Double Barrier Reef
Marine Park in Bohol in the Philippines. www.bohol-philippines.com/underwater-grotto-shrine.html
There's a Guardian of the Reef merman statue
just outside the Divetech dive shop in Grand
Cayman that is twinned with one at Sunset House,
which has its own mermaid statue of Amphitrite
around 50 yards from the shore and 45 feet deep. www.guardianofthereef.com/
The largest underwater statue must be the
Ocean Atlas. This 60-ton figure, sculpted by British/
Guyanan artist Jason deCaires Taylor, is said to symbolize
the greater need for ocean conservation and
ironically can be found close to an oil refinery in
New Providence, in the Bahamas. It's rivaled in size
only by the abandoned fake moai, a stoical 22-foottall
monolith lying against the reef, that mirrors the
monoliths on shore in Easter Island but was actually
made for a less-than-successful Kevin Costner
movie, Rapa-Nui, in 1994.
None of these can compare with the statue
park conceived and sculpted by Taylor in Grenada.
'Vicissitudes' is the name of an installation placed
in Molinere Bay in 2006. This collection of life-sized
figures of schoolchildren arranged in a circle has
since been joined by other similar installations.
There's the 'Lost Correspondent' at a desk complete
with a typewriter as well as other interesting
figures, and not to be outdone in the religious category,
the park now also has its own 'Christ of the
Deep.'
The idea was first mooted after Hurricane Ivan
and Hurricane Emily destroyed much of Grenada's
coral reefs in 2004 and 2005. Already, the statues
have attracted sponge growth and a healthy nudibranch
population. Recently, a local artist has
added new works to the sculpture park.
Even that pales into insignificance with Taylor's
array of 500 life-sized figures that comprise an
underwater installation, 'Silent Evolution,' at the Museo Subacuatici de Art in the waters off Cancun,
Isla Mujeres and Punta Nizuc in Mexico. For example,
'Inertia' is an overweight naked man sitting on
a sofa with a plate of fast food, watching television.
This work was conceived in 2009 and draws some
750,000 visitors annually, away from the area's natural
reefs toward an otherwise featureless seabed.
Not to be outdone, on the other side of the
Atlantic, Jason deCaires Taylor was commissioned
and created another sculpture park off the coast
of Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands. It represents
desperate refugees from Africa and selfie-taking
tourists. The Museo Atlantico includes Taylor's
'The Raft of Lampedusa,' a sculpted inflatable
boat carrying 13 refugees and a modern take on
Géricault's 1818 painting, 'The Raft of the Medusa.'
The full installation will be completed this year,
but the raft is expected to be joined by a faceless
couple taking a selfie, people glued to their phones
and others brandishing iPads or wielding cameras.
The artist calls it 'the Instagram generation.' www.underwatersculpture.com
Taylor doesn't have a monopoly on underwater
sculpture. Val, with her husband Frédéric Morel,
is a French-born sculptor living in Thailand. She
has recently installed three large sculptures near
Koh Tao. Called 'Ocean Utopia,' it was completed
in cooperation with an NGO specializing
in the conservation of coral reefs. Already marine
life is finding it an inviting underwater habitat. www.sculptureval.com
In Austria, an otherwise uninviting freshwater
lake hosts the somewhat bizarre Grublsee Alpen
Aquarium which features replica ancient artifacts
submerged in its depths including Egyptian tombs, old cannons and Buddhist statues alongside quirky
pieces like a miniature Statue of Liberty, Christ the
Redeemer, aliens and skeletons. During the winter
it is inaccessible to divers thanks to the snow and
ice, when a rustic ski hut is the only attraction.
Gambling with the stakes to be the most bizarre,
back in the USA, a former NYC environmental
324-foot tanker ship has been sunk in 120 feet of
water off Pompano Beach, FL. Unlike the many
other wrecks purposefully sunk along this coast
for the benefit of divers, Lady Luck features work by noted Greater Fort Lauderdale artist Dennis
MacDonald, who was hired to create several fun
and fanciful displays, including a faux casino
for the ship deck, which features poker tables,
slot machines, a cascade of gigantic dice, an
octopus craps dealer, card sharks and a mermaid
cocktail waitress. One of the largest contributions
to Florida's artificial reef system, it is intended to
be the centerpiece of what will become Shipwreck
Park and is expected to draw 35,000 divers annually. www.southfloridadiving.com
With coral reefs seemingly in trouble worldwide,
one day we may be grateful for sculpture parks as a
habitat for marine life and as unique places for divers
and photographers.
Life mimics art and art mimics life. In an aim
to call attention to the marine environment partly as a call for better conservation, artist Doug Aitken
built an ambitious installation on the floor of the
Pacific near Avalon, Catalina Island, to coincide
with his exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary
Art. Scuba divers can swim through a series of
underwater structures. 'Underwater Pavilions',
composed of three geometric sculptures with partly
mirrored exteriors moored at depths between five
and 50-feet. It caused a sensation in the art world.
Although this installation is said to be temporary
(but with no end date yet decided), Aitken hopes
for a permanent installation erected in Venice, Italy,
during 2017.