ANTONY Gormley's 'Iron Men of the Mersey' have arrived in Crosby - bringing a multi-million pound boost to the local economy.
More than 600,000 visitors are expected to visit the award-winning artist's Another Place over the next 18 months.
Local bars, restaurants, shops and other businesses are set to benefit from an extra #6m ringing through their tills after work began on Tuesday to install 100 life-size sculptures along a two-mile stretch of beach from Sea-forth to Blundellsands.
It will be three weeks before the artwork is finished.
Turner prize winner Antony Gormley - most famous for giant Angel of the North off the A1 near Gates-head - made casts for the 650kg iron men from his own body.
He visited Crosby beach on Tuesday morning to see the first statue driven into the sands and said Another Place harnesses the 'ebb and flow of the tide to explore man's relationship with nature.'
He told the Crosby Herald: "The seaside is a good place to do this.
"Here time is tested by tide, architecture by the elements and the prevalence of sky seems to question the earth's substance.
"In this work human life is tested against planetary time.
"The sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body.
"It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet."
Article
