Two years ago he built a snowman in the Arctic, funded by the British taxpayer. Yesterday Antony Gormley courted fresh controversy by proposing that the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square be occupied 24 hours a day by members of the public volunteering to stand on it for an hour.

One and Other, the latest work from the Turner prizewinner who specialises in taking moulds from his body, involves giving ordinary people far more than their 15 minutes of fame.

Over 12 months, 8,760 people would have the chance to get on to the plinth, one at a time for 60 minutes, and do whatever they liked up there. Each would become “an image of themselves, representatives of the human population of the world”, he said. The £300,000 fee for the idea would go to Gormley.

Gormley is one of six artists – the others are Jeremy Deller, Tracey Emin, Anish Kapoor, Yinka Shonibare and Bob & Roberta Smith – competing to create the next sculpture for the empty 1840s plinth in the northwest corner of the pedestrianised square.

Their individual proposals were unveiled yesterday at the National Gallery after they were shortlisted by the Mayor of London’s Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, which is chaired by Sandy Nairne, the director of the National Portrait Gallery. Each artist showed a 3-D maquette of what they would create for a space shared with statues of Nelson, General Charles Napier and Major-General Sir Henry Havelock, as well as George IV.

Gormley, who won the Turner Prize in 1995, is best known for the 65ft statue The Angel of the Northin Gateshead, the £800,000 cost of which was attacked by many local councillors. It received a £584,000 grant from the Arts Council, which is also among funders of the plinth commission.

Yesterday he unveiled a model of One and Other, which he described as a cross between reality television and Speakers’ Corner. Its ethos is said to be about inviting “citizens to enter the space of art and become creative partners” because “the 21st century is the century of the global citizen”.

“I would like the widest range of human behaviour to be represented,” he said. “The asylum-seeker, the person who is homeless, people who don’t naturally think of this as being their kind of thing.”He added: “We need the bodybuilder but we also need the paraplegic, the naturist but also the Shakespearean actor, perhaps a politician and a car mechanic, a granny from Pinner and perhaps a member of the Royal Family. It’s very important this is a stage and all the world can come to it.”

People will be able to mount the plinth carrying “anything they can”, he said, whether props or broadcasting equipment. “Some may want to take things off,” he conceded, noting that anyone caught inciting violence or endangering life would be removed. His model of the empty plinth includes a safety net.

While Mr Nairne described it as “extraordinarily artful”, others were less than impressed. John Larson, a leading sculpture expert, said: “This is the kind of idea that we, as art students, discussed in pubs for a joke. We would never have done it because it’s too ridiculous.”

The commission is part of a series of changing displays for a plinth that had stood bare for 158 years until the previous chairman of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Prue Leith, came up with the idea of using it as a showcase for modern work. Each sculpture remains for 18 months.

Shortlist rivals

1 Bob & Roberta Smith: Faîtes L’Art, pas La Guerre (Make Art, Not War), an illuminated peace sign

2 Tracey Emin: Something for the Future, a bronze sculpture of meerkats

3 Yinka Shonibare: Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, a scale replica of HMS Victory, the flagship of Admiral Lord Nelson, in a giant glass bottle

4 Jeremy Deller has created The Spoils of War (Memorial for an Unknown Civilian), which features the remains of a vehicle destroyed in an attack in Iraq

5 Anish Kapoor: Sky Plinth, with five concave mirrors cantilevering off the plinth to “display the changing skyscape as a monument”

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