Turner Winners Short-Listed for £2M Commission
by Zoe Strimpel
Thu, 31 Jan 2008 at 2:19 PM
Britain seems to have gone mad for public art. What with the recent hubbub over who will lay claim to the next Fourth Plinth space in Trafalgar Square and a Time Out London front page this week charting the rise and fall of Banksy and the ascension of a new wave of graffiti artists, you'd think we thought of little else.
Now, five artists have been short-listed for a £2 million sculpture commission just outside of London, in Ebbsfleet, Kent, to celebrate the new Ebbsfleet International Station (where Eurostar stops) and the redevelopment of Ebbsfleet Valley. The installation is to be 132 feet tall, visible from above and below.
Among the contenders is Mark Wallinger, the winner of the 2007 Turner Prize for "State Britain," his replica of Brian Haw's massive Parliament Square war protest. Others who made the short list are the French artist Daniel Buren, famous for his installation of squat columns in the courtyard of the Palais Royal; Turner Prize winners Richard Deacon and Rachel Whiteread, and the sculptor Christopher Le Brun.
The work is intended to monumentalize the sometimes-overlooked quality of the region, and is due for completion by 2010. "It is an iconic thing we're trying to create here," the Lord Lieutenant of Kent and chairman of the selection panel, Allan Willett, said.
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