REEF is an artistic work by internationally renowned artist Simon Faithfull. It will positively contribute to the biodiversity of the seabed in line with Wreck to Reef’s objectives

REEF is planned to begin this August with the controlled sinking of a realistic sculpture of a boat on the Wreck to Reef site at Portland. Local experts Quest Marine are managing this event and the event will be filmed by a professional film crew at the surface and specialist equipment will capture images of the boat as it sinks underwater. The event will be broadcast online via a dedicated website and the underwater equipment will continue to film and broadcast for the next 11 months, thereby capturing the magical transformation of an old boat to a new home for fish and other marine life. Filmed footage will be edited by the artist and will be shown as a gallery installation at Fabrica this October as part of the UK’s largest photography festival Brighton Photo Biennial.  The exhibition will then tour to two highly respected art museums in France (Musee des Beaux Arts Calais, and FRAC Basse-Normandie in Caen) until June 2015.

REEF will positively contribute to the biodiversity of the seabed in line with Wreck to Reef’s objectives and has the buy in of Wreck to Reef’s stakeholders, including Dorset Wildlife Trust who are enthusiastic about keeping the underwater equipment filming and broadcasting the colonisation of the sculpture by marine life beyond July 2015 when the REEF project funding ends.

The project is largely funded through the Interreg IVA Channel programme and Arts Council Lottery funding.