Angel of the South

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This name has also been applied to the Willow Man in Bridgwater.

The Angel of the South or the Ebbsfleet Landmark is a planned £2 million colossal sculpture at Ebbsfleet in north Kent. It is planned as a counterpart to Antony Gormley's Angel of the North at Gateshead (with a stipulation that it be at least twice as wide and high, and visible from 20 miles away), and to mark one of six main "gateways" to London. The necessary construction works are being organised by Futurecity Arts, whilst the project itself is run as part of the Thames Gateway development scheme by a consortium including Eurostar, London and Continental Railways and Land Securities. Land Securities has committed more than £1 million of its funding, and Futurecity Arts are seeking £1 million to match that. Allan Willett, Lord Lieutenant of Kent, chairs the Ebbsfleet Landmark panel.

Gormley and other artists were invited to admit designs on 22 May 2007, by which time the site (a hill outside the new Eurostar station at Ebbsfleet International, near Land Securities' Springhead Park residential development) had been announced. A shortlist of 5 was chosen on 28 January 2008 (consisting of Mark Wallinger, Rachel Whiteread, Richard Deacon, Christopher le Brun, and Daniel Buren), with press coverage noting the omission of Gormley. The artists were given 3 months from then to produce their proposals, which were displayed to the public from May 2008 at Bluewater Shopping Centre. Le Brun produced a winged disc; Buren a tower of 5 cubes; Deacon a stack of 26 different steel polyhedrons; Wallinger a realistic sculpture of a horse, in honour of Horsa; and Whiteread a plaster cast of a house's interior atop an artificially-created mountain.

A winner will be selected in autumn 2008, and the sculpture's completion is planned to occur before domestic high-speed services to Kent begin on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2009, in good time for the 2012 Olympics.[1] The competition triggered public interest, and was the subject of a satirical series of cartoons in Steve Bell's If... series between 4 and 8 February 2008, and in May 2008.

Local response to the plans has been somewhat mixed. The general consensus appears that the designs do not reflect the heritage of the local area and a petition has been set up seeking a public voice in dropping the proposed plans and finding a suitable alternative instead. ^[1]^[2]