Southern England is to have its own version of the Angel of the North in time for the 2012 Olympics under a plan to be unveiled this week.

Leading sculptors such as Antony Gormley, who designed the original statue outside Gateshead, and Anish Kapoor are to be invited to submit proposals for an edifice that would be visible from 20 miles away.

The project’s organisers have compared the idea with the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, which stands on a mountaintop overlooking the ocean. The British equivalent would be built on a hillside just outside a railway station: Ebbsfleet, in north Kent, will be one of the main stations for visitors arriving from Europe at the 2012 Games.

The £2m statue has been commissioned by a consortium including Eurostar and London & Continental Railways – operators of the Channel tunnel rail link – and Land Securities, the property company.

“We [want to] have the world’s best artists submitting designs for this project,” said Mark Davey, director of Futurecity Arts, the firm organising the project. “Our ambitions are for this sculpture to be a landmark for the southeast for the next century.”

The project is further advanced than a rival plan by Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, for a ring of landmark sculptures on roads around the capital.

The design competition will be launched on Tuesday and it is understood that in addition to Gormley, invitations will also go out to Thomas Heatherwick, designer of B of the Bang, a roadside sculpture in Manchester, and Kapoor, designer of the Cloud Gate in Chicago.

The winning design is expected to be at least as high and wide as the Angel of the North, which is 65ft from head to toe and 175ft across its wings. Formal planning permission from Kent county council is expected later this year.

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