Drowned world: welcome to Europe’s first undersea sculpture museum

On the seabed off the coast of Lanzarote, British artist Jason deCaires Taylor is creating an extraordinary series of underwater artworks, concrete figures representing desperate refugees and selfie-taking tourists that are transformed as they become slowly colonised by marine life

" See a gallery of more of Jason deCaires Taylor's undersea sculpture

Jason deCaires Taylor is sinking fast. Below, 15 metres under the surface of the sea, a crowd of figures, unmistakably human, are motionless. It is eerily still but for the schools of fish weaving through this newly arrived sunken society. Taylor has just submerged these sculptures in what will become Europe's first underwater museum, Museo Atlantico, in Lanzarote. Under the surface of the water, The Raft of Lampedusa, a sculpted boat carrying 13 refugees, is still just visible as it is lowered. Divers surround it, inflatable buoys hold it while Taylor waits with a waterproof clipboard, ready to place it in its new home.

Taylor's Raft of Lampedusa - a modern take on Gi(C)ricault's 1818 painting The Raft of the Medusa - will soon be joined on the seabed by other statues; a faceless couple taking a selfie, people glued to their phones, others wielding an iPad or pointing cameras. Everyone - the boat and its passengers, the "Instagram generation" - will be heading towards a wall, the entrance to a city and the point of no return. Beyond, a human botanical garden - fantastical hybrids of people and plants drawn from the flora and fauna of Lanzarote. With plans for an underwater fountain, lighting and a giant mirror reflecting a "pool" in the sea, Taylor is clearly aiming for something epic with this thought-provoking journey.