Angel at 10

"It's a wonderful thing. I feel a bit like a proud dad who has seen his kid grow up and become a kind of individual in the world."

Ten years after The Angel of the North was installed on a hill top in Gateshead, the sculptor speaks affectionately about his creation.

Antony Gormley's sculpture has now become one of the most recognisable pieces of public art in the world.

Despite his affection for the Angel, he said he probably said goodbye to it a long time ago, when he signed off the drawings in 1997, and from that time onwards it became the North East's because that's where it was made.

Antony Gormley in his studio

Poignant significance

It was the location of the future sculpture which convinced Antony to accept the project, with it being the site of a former colliery pithead baths.

He said: "That mound was the reason I accepted the invitation. Because I was quite snooty at the time. I said 'I don't make motorway art'.

"And then they sent me the picture of the hill and that convinced me. I have always had a fondness for Silbury Hill and Wayland's Smithy, I guess tumuli generally.

"And the idea that this was a special tumuli that hid below it three levels of mineworkings, three seams of coal and that for 300 years or more people had toiled down there in the dark."

He said he believed there was a very poignant significance after the closing of coal mines and the demise of shipbuilding on the Tyne.

The design of the Angel took some of its inspiration from the North East's shipbuilding heritage, with the Angel's ribs mirroring the inside of a ship's hull.

Antony said the low point for him was the newspaper headline 'Nazi...but nice' suggesting the Angel of the North bore a similarity with a sculpture commissioned by Hitler.

"I did say maybe we have been caught by bad history and we should think again because this is really tragic," he said.

He said a few people from Gateshead Council who were at the heart of the project went to talk to him about it.

"I said 'Look, maybe we have just got to call it a day because the tide has swung against us'. But they weren't going to hear of it. So they basically put me back on my horse and gave it a big slap," he said.

Shearer shirt

Antony believes a turning point was when Newcastle fans draped a huge replica of Alan Shearer's number nine shirt over the Angel in the run-up to the 1998 FA Cup final. He later met the people behind it.

He said he though it was fantastic and a gesture of acceptance.

"And it was almost like if you liked art you were a sissy and real boys played football and knew everything about football but from that point onwards actually in the locker rooms of the North East it was all right to talk about art," he said.

The Angel's ribs are like the inside of a ship

"And that was a huge, huge shift, I mean I think a real cultural shift and I bless them for it.

"And they did it so well and the stripes were so in tune with the ribs it was great."

Antony believes the Angel has been a good thing for Gateshead and has helped to raise its profile saying he believed at the time it was erected there were issues like serious unemployment in the town.

'Very proud'

He said: "I think the Angel has become part of the rebuilding of confidence and I can take absolutely no credit for that.

"It's very, very much to do with the character of the North East, the fact that people up there are warm-hearted, open-minded, practical, get on with things.

"And I think the Angel was a sort of defiant thing in a way, a celebration of what we can do, what we can do right now, not just about what we could do, it's about what we can do now and that there's something to get on with."

While accepting the Angel is the work he is probably best known for and is proud to be linked with it, he said he has moved on.

He said: "It was a great thing to make. It's not mine any more. I have moved on and I think Gateshead has moved on. Gateshead has moved on in a way with it. I have moved on without it and that's as it should be.

"I am very, very proud to have been associated with it but there's a lot more that I want to do."