Wallinger aims high for Kent sculpture

Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger has been shortlisted for a £2m commission to find the south of England's answer to the Angel of the North. Wallinger and fellow British artists Rachel Whiteread, Richard Deacon and Christopher Le Brun, and the French artist Daniel Buren, have been tasked with creating what will be Britain's largest public art commission for the new Ebbsfleet International station in Kent. The resulting 50m sculpture will sit in the Ebbsfleet Valley between Dartford and Gravesend and will be seen from road, rail and air.

Sponsored by Eurostar, the work will dwarf Antony Gormley's 20m high Angel of the North near Gateshead. It will also tower above some of the world's most iconic sculptures - Rio's Christ the Redeemer (40m) and the Statue of Liberty (46m, sans pedestal) - but will be the same height as Nelson's Column. Proposals will go on display in the spring and a winner will be announced in the summer.

Wallinger won the Turner Prize last year for State Britain, a re-creation of Brian Haw's anti-war protest in Parliament Square. He said he was excited by the surroundings for the sculpture. "It was a route in and out of the country going back millennia," he told the Times. "The challenge is to create something that is a landmark for the transient passenger or motorist."