LONDON.- The Landmark Trust announced the public opening of LAND, an exciting collaboration with sculptor Antony Gormley, as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations.

LAND, a commission by the Landmark Trust, comprises five life-size standing sculptures by Antony Gormley cast in iron and installed at five spectacular Landmark sites personally selected by the artist. Each sculpture has been specially designed and created for each building and its surroundings.

All five points are connected by water. Four of them stand sentinel on our coastline and the fifth - anchoring the whole installation - on the South Stratford canal. The LAND sculptures are at:

• Martello Tower, Aldeburgh, Suffolk
• Clavell Tower, Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset
• Saddell Bay, Mull of Kintyre, Scotland
• Lengthsman’s Cottage, Lowsonford, Warwickshire
• Lundy Island, Bristol Channel

The five life-size vertical body-forms add a point of focus to each location, each conceived in relation to their sites, encouraging visitors to engage with elemental conditions and the different qualities of the North Sea, the English Channel, the Kilbrannan Sound, and the Bristol Channel and the open horizon between sea and sky. The fifth location is a quiet site in a Warwickshire village, where the sculpture stands looking into the depths of the man-made lock, in contrast to the wild, ruggedness of the coastal sites.

Antony Gormley, said: "I am excited about making sculpture that stands in the wind, the rain and snow, day and night. The sculptures will be like standing stones: markers in space and time, linking with specific places and their histories; catalysts for reflection.

LAND invites us to think about our identity and the mindset of a nation surrounded by water, and how that affects the way we make our choices. Water both divides from and connects us to the rest of the world. Water isolates us and makes us self-reliant, but with the invitation of the horizon offers the chance to overcome our limitations and engage with the future. More generally, these sites with their industrially made body-forms provide a good place to reassess the human project."

LAND shares many of the themes found in Landmark's work: an engagement with landscape and the habitats we create, and how at a human level we resonate with them. Landmark’s buildings are often in remote locations, some of the buildings – notably towers and follies - were intentionally built to stand apart, some are positioned close to the coastline, making them a landmark or point from which to look out at the world. It is this distance in time and isolation and people's place within it that is celebrated in LAND, and which embodies Landmark's work over the past five decades.

Caroline Stanford, Historian & Head of Engagement, the Landmark Trust, said:
"For our 50th anniversary, we wanted to do something that everyone can enjoy, not only for those that stay in our buildings but the local communities in whose landscape the local buildings fit. We are delighted that one of the greatest artists of our generation, Antony Gormley has agreed to collaborate with us on LAND, an inspirational statement and celebration of the Landmark Trust at 50."

Since May 1965 over 200 significant buildings have been rescued by the Landmark Trust, many of which could have been lost forever. They now have a new lease of life as self-catering accommodation and range from castles, abbeys and follies to cottages, an old railway station and lighthouse keeper’s cottage. Today these buildings welcome over 54,000 guests a year.

All of the LAND sites are fully accessible and free to the general public to enjoy from May 2015 to May 2016.