Acclaimed sculptor Antony Gormley, whose figures grace landscapes across the world, is creating a new statue for the Suffolk coast.
The artist – creator of the Angel of the North – is making a life-size statue of man to stand atop one of the county’s iconic Napoleonic war-time forts.
The figure will be one of five placed around the country for a year-long celebration of the Landmark Trust, to mark the building preservation charity’s 50th anniversary.
Life-size statues of men will be placed at trust properties marking the four compass points and the centre of the country, with the one at the Martello Tower at Slaughden, Aldeburgh, marking the east.
Mr Gormley said he had been intrigued by the project, called Land, and wanted his work “not simply become an unnecessary addition, but where it could be a catalyst and take on a richer or deeper engagement with the site”.
He said: “Each of the five works made for this commission tries to identify a human space in space at large.
“The work is a register for our experience of our own relative positions in space and time, which has led me to choose positions on the edge, the liminal state of the shoreline.”
He had chosen four coastal sites – Aldeburgh; Clavell Tower; Dorset; Lundy in the Bristol Channel; Saddell Bay, Mull of Kintyre – and at Lengthsman’s Cottage, Warwickshire, overlooking a lake.
He said: “I have tried to associate all five works with both their social contexts and the geology of site, using the language of architecture and geology, while acknowledging the skin as a ‘weathered edge’.
“They are simply displacements, identifying the place where a particular human body once stood and anyone could stand.”
In addition to the Angel of the North alongside the A1 at Gateshead, Mr Gormley, a Turner prize winner, has other permanent art works, including Another Place on Crosby Beach, Inside Australia at Lake Ballard, Western Australia, and Exposure at Lelystad in Holland.
The Land figures are being made of iron and will be in place from April next year to May 2016.Suffolk Coastal will need to give consent for the Aldeburgh one.
The Martello Tower at Slaughden is rented out as a holiday home by the Landmark Trust, which cares for 200 buildings around the country.
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