The long-mooted Hove Plinth project has burst into life with the release of ten eye-catching designs vying to grace the city’s seafront.

The Hove Civic Society has spent painstaking hours building up support for the public sculpture competition and has received an influx of creative designs from artists across the country.

Society members have now whittled down the initial applications down to ten, with just three to have their moment in the limelight on Hove’s beloved seafront.

Beacons by John Atkin

Atkin’s stainless steel cone sculpture can be laser-cut with Brighton-inspired imagery and illuminated with LEDs placed inside.

The artist, whose three-year MA sculpture course at the Royal College of Art was personally funded by Henry Moore, suggested the laser-cut designs could be developed through community workshops.

Atkin said his work was inspired by beacons forming part of the history of Brighton with a chain of beacons set alight along the south coast and maintained throughout the Tudor Period and beyond to warn the populace of impending invasion.

His previous work includes a 27-ton sculpture for the Beijing Olympiad which still remains in Olympic park.

Convergence by David Harber

Oxfordshire artist David Harber’s curvaceous design is inspired by the links formed over time between Brighton and Hove to become a single city, as well as its position on the sea's edge.

On the underside of the sculpture’s tendril will be a mirror divided into 19 sections, representing the19 groynes found along the Brighton and Hove beach front, which will catch the light "glinting and glistening" when viewed from various angles.

Sunlight passing through an aperture within the larger orb body will cast a disc of sunlight onto the shadowed area to the north of the sculpture.

Escape by Matthew Davies

This “fluid amorphous” sculpture aims to mirror the organic movements of nature, the sea breeze, the gliding birds and rolling waves, as well as mimicking the energy and diversity of the people of the city moving around it.

Oxford-based Davies describes his blue opaque cast resin design as having an “ethereal quality” similar to Amber.

It also echoes seaside treats such as ice-creams, ice-lollies and sweets with a tongue doubling back on itself to “taste the flavours on offer”.

The design references the Art Nouveau organic “whiplash” curves found in many decorative architectural elements along the city’s seafront.

Flight of the Langoustine by Pierre Diamantopoulo

Brighton-based Diamantopoulo is the only artist with two designs on the shortlist.

His Flight of the Langoustine was inspired by beachcombing in Brighton after a storm left behind a “mangled lobster pot” yards from his studio in the King’s Road Arches.

The artist saw the broken object as a means of escape for the lobsters and by extension “a human story of exodus and release – a dash for freedom”.

A member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors, his work was included in the Twenty-First Century British Sculpture Exhibition for monumental art at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Promenade by April Young

Horses play a prominent role in Young’s work with an ongoing Arts Council-funded project called Gifted in the East Midlands taking inspiration from the artist’s childhood experiences in Brighton.

The Carousel Horse acts within her work as a central metaphor for the ups and downs and cyclic motion of life.

The artist describes the theme as a “direct response to the site” referencing both the history and culture of promenading.

The sculpture will be constructed from highly durable resins and Jesmonite plaster, and by night will be illuminated with projected digital imagery stored and collected in the mapping software and light projector.

LAN A by Suresh Dutt

Dutt’s mystical shape is inspired by some of the city’s more exotic architecture in both the Royal Pavilion and Jaipur Gate at Hove museum, described by the artist as “hybrid structures located in an alien landscape”.

The marble sculpture uses elements of jali, a perforated stone or latticed screen found in Indian, Indo-Islamic and Islamic architecture.

The geometric form is a three-dimensional representation of a necker cube, an optical illusion, with each part of the image “ambiguous by itself” but open to an interpretation of as a whole.

Dutt completed his Master of Philosophy at the Royal College of Art in 2010 and has exhibited at the Pump House Gallery in London, Manchester Art Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum and Preston Manor.

Perfect Storm by Jonathan Hogg and Stephanie Rubin

Rye-based Rubin and London-based Hogg have created Perfect Storm from a year-long digital data collection of wind speeds and directions, the final giant bronze cyclone sculpture is literally shaped by the wind on Hove seafront.

The artists say the work is inspired by Rubin’s father’s barograph, which measures pressure, and images from her childhood of barometric readings in red cochineal ink, barometers, thermometers and rain gauges.

The collected wind data is transformed into 365 smoothed outlines representing the average wind speed and direction throughout each day of the year.

These shapes will be laser-cut and stacked onto a spindle to form a three dimensional structure that will be cast in bronze.

Camera Man by Roland Stevenson

Promenaders could well be taken by surprise by Stevenson’s early 20th Century cameraman which conceals a small wide angled digital camera within.

Film of passersby will be shown on two interactive screens housed in two shelters behind the sculpture which would also screen a history of filmmaking in Hove, information about the Hove Plinth project and a film showing the making of the sculpture.

Stevenson said he hoped his work would give locals and visitors an insight into the “important, if little known” role Hove has played in the history of film and filmmaking.

The Brighton Polytechnic graduate, who has created props and sculptures for Hollywood films including Fifth Element, Gladiator and Prometheus, proposes a one and a half times life size bronze sculpture.

Constellation by Jonathan Wright

Wright’s design is part orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system, part film camera and part ship’s compass.

Instead of planets circling on the orrery, objects will instead refer directly to Hove and its surroundings.

The most popular local landmarks and iconic images will be decided through working with local groups and residents in workshops and meetings.

The main structure will rest on a pivot that allows the work to move and respond to environmental conditions and incorporate a large glass lens.

The Kent-based artist has promised judges his design “will cast beautiful shadows”.

Cirque du Soleil by Pierre Diamantopoulo

Brighton-based Diamantopoulo’s second entry on the shortlist references big wheels, hoopla throwing in the “impossible pier game”, circus acrobats on the lawns in Festival time, Ballet Rambert, and all “the hum of Brighton and Hove”.

The artist said that Cirque du Soleil was one of several maquettes he made in his first studio in Brighton.

He describes the coated bronze and steel sculpture, which is to designed to be open, letting light, seascape and landscape through, as “poking fun at gravity”.