Plan for Britain's biggest sculpture

Horse and art ... Mark Wallinger's shortlisted proposal for the Ebbsfleet Landmark


A monumental, lifelike white horse is the early favourite to become the largest piece of public sculpture Britain has ever produced. At cost of £2m, it will be more than twice as expensive as Antony Gormley's celebrated Angel of the North. And, at 50 metres, it will be well over double the angel's height.

Five proposals for the sculpture have been unveiled. The artists are Mark Wallinger, who came up with the giant horse; Rachel Whiteread, who proposes a cast house atop a mountain of recycled rubble; Richard Deacon; Christopher Le Brun, who proposes a wing and disc; and Daniel Buren. The sculpture will sit next to the A2 in Kent near Ebbsfleet, which over the next 25 years is planned to become the site of more than 10,000 new homes. The landmark will be visible to travellers as they pull out of Ebbsfleet International train station bound for the continent, and to motorists as they drive to and from Dover.

Wallinger, who won the Turner prize last year, has long been interested in racehorses. He said that he was thinking of "Wapping Street [the A2], along which horses had travelled into Britain for centuries; about the white horses carved into chalk hills; about Hengist and Horsa in the sixth century, who landed as Saxon invaders near Ebbsfleet. The source of our word "horse" is Horsa. And then, in a convoluted way, I came to discover that the white horse was in fact the symbol of Kent."

His horse, should it be selected, would probably be constructed in steel "like the hull of a ship" and then painted. He said his proposal would be a "hopeful and deeply rooted symbol". He has been scouring the stud books to find the perfect thoroughbred grey that he could use as his model.

Whiteread intends to reprise her famous, contentious cast of a house for the Ebbsfleet project, while Le Brun proposes to cast a vast wing and disc from concrete for the site. "It would be a very simple form," he said, "that would produce a lot of complicated effects" as light and shadow ran over the work.

Richard Deacon proposes a "nest" of steel polyhedrons, almost like a collapsed pylon (a mass of pylons surrounds the site). He has also compared his structure to a cairn.

The only non-British artist on the shortlist, Buren, who is French, proposes a stacked tower of cubes intersected by a laser beam. The proposals go on display at Bluewater shopping centre, Kent, from May 27. The winner will be announced in the autumn, and completion is expected in 2010.

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