Towards the end of June, five monumental sculptures in shimmering white marble were loaded on to a boat and dropped to the seabed off the Tuscan coast of Italy. Carved over three months by five up-and-coming sculptors, they were the latest contribution to a modern Atlantis – a drowned city of statues accessible only to free-divers or those with serious scuba kit.
In the commoditised art world, it doesn’t make sense to hide work away, yet from prehistoric cave painters to the 13th-century stonesmiths who carved gargoyles high on the spires of medieval cathedrals, artists and craftspeople have always done it – and still do. Such work isn’t sellable or even necessarily classifiable as art, but it has an energy and an integrity that touch you if you’re lucky enough to find it.
