The Angel of the North
Monday, 6th February 2006 by James Turnbull
The 20m tall Angel of the North is the work of artist Anthony Gormley, who had the stature cast entirely out of steel. Standing in Gateshead on the A1 road from London to Edinburgh the angel has a 54m wingspan and can be seen for miles (ground level shots).
It was erected in 1998 when there was many protests from people who disliked it and thought it was a waste of money. I visited the angel not long after and when we got up close I recall being very impressed, although after being squished in the back of a car with my brother for 3 hours I was probably just grateful for the chance to stretch my legs 😉
Thanks: Gas Boy
thats a nice shadow. 🙂
Here are some construction photos to better understand how big it is. http://www.kenfinn.demon.co.uk/angel/shape.htm
Gormley also created the “Iron Man” in Victoria Square, Birmingham.
It’s nowhere near as big, being around 12 feet tall, but you can just about make it out (East of the cluster of 3 trees) in the new hi-res coverage of Birmingham.
Gormley also created “Quantum Cloud” for the 1999 opening of the Millenium Dome. It sits on a platform in the water. There’s a short bit of information at Wikipedia (along with some ground shots). There’s also a bit of large type for “Transco” and a cool shadow to the SW. View Placemark
goto [url=http://znonz.blogspot.com/]ZNO[/url] for 3D model of angel of the north .. fantastic sculpture!!!
Just saw it on Billy Connolly’s world tour of England, Ireland and Wales, and wanted to look it up on google, but you were first 😉
The sculpture was not Cast, it was fabricated out of 220 tons of cor-ten steel. Cut and welded. To put it in perspective a little, it is about 2 feet off the hieight of a jumbo jet tailplane, and is wider than the staute of liberty is tall, plus it has enough steel in it to make 16 double decker buses or four cheiftain tanks. It cost taxpayers over £1m sterling, built february 1998 and made to last for 100 years.