The Rising Tide, by British sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor. The four ghostly statues will only be visible twice a day at low tide. Photograph: Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images
At high tide, you might barely know they’re there. But as the water level of the Thames comes and goes twice a day with the tide, the four ghostly heads – and the horses they sit atop – slowly emerge fully into view.
The sculpture, entitled The Rising Tide, has been installed near the bankside of Vauxhall bridge and is the work of Jason deCaires Taylor, 41, a British artist best known for creating the world’s first underwater museum in Cancun, then again in the Bahamas.
For the past decade, Taylor’s work has been motivated by conservation and redressing climate change, with his underwater museums solely designed to draw divers away from the most fragile and delicate parts of coral reefs. His newest work in the Thames, he says, is no different in its political purpose.
“Working in conservation, I am very concerned with all the associated effects of climate change and the state of peril our seas are in at the moment,” said Taylor. “So here I wanted a piece that was going to be revealed with the tide and worked with the natural environment of the Thames, but also alluded to the industrial nature of the city and it’s obsessive and damaging focus just on work and construction.”
The installation, which sits less than a mile from the Houses of Parliament, comprises four life-size shire horses, standing as a symbol of the origins of industrialisation but also as a warning for the bleak future it is creating for the world by their representation of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
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