Indre-et-Loire: Audiard's goat on the A10 in Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine: here we go!

It is a goat that could have made its designer, Michel Audiard, go crazy since 2007. Eighteen years that the sculptor from Tours has been hoping to one day see this monumental sculpture of a white goat, 7 m in height and length, come to fruition. , above the A10 motorway, in Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine.

Mr. Audiard's goat was not talked about for several years, before resurfacing five years ago. Alas, the Covid and the financial crisis have passed through in the meantime, thwarting the predictions of the sculptor and his supporters, starting with the elected officials of Sainte-Maure who believe in their monumental goat.

A strong signal given, a step taken Tuesday evening

“A strong signal was needed to relaunch the project, and this is the step that was taken this evening,” confided the sculptor, Tuesday evening January 21, 2025, at the Château de Sainte-Maure, after the signing of a subsidy agreement granted by the Centre-Val de Loire Region to the project. A first big financial boost which amounts to €97,000, out of an overall forecast budget estimated at €405,000.

The Region is priming the pump substantially. It now remains to convince other communities. The Department is requested. The State, Europe could be. On the private financing side, “many patrons were waiting for this official green light to finally be able to participate in the project… And I emphasize that it is tax-exempt”, assures the sculptor.

A “strong identity marker of Touraine”

At the Château de Sainte-Maure, Mayor Michel Champigny was as enthusiastic as he was excited by the idea that one day this giant white biquette would be installed at the gates of the city. A work visible 4 km upstream and downstream. Around the first elected representative of Sainte-Maure, the deputy Laurent Baumel and the president of the Region François Bonneau multiplied dithyrambs and arguments to call for the realization of the said project.

“It will be a strong identity marker for Touraine as there are on other motorways that everyone knows and which immediately identify a region,” insisted Michel Audiard. His monumental goat would thus join the circle of motorway sculptures with a regional identity such as the broken columns in Auvergne on the A89 near Clermont-Ferrand, Woinic the wild boar of the Ardennes on the A34, Archeval the giant horse of Saumur on the A85 or the spiers of the cathedrals in Essonne on the A10, which signal the arrival in the Paris region.

The sculpture will be made according to the formula dear to its creator, in layers, in fiberglass resin and gelcoat, “which guarantee the durability of the skin over time”.

Michel Audiard also announced a schedule on Tuesday evening: in the spring, a 4 m high goat's leg will be installed, “so people start to realize the dimensions”. In winter 2025, construction work – in the workshop – will begin for approximately six months. The artist evokes spring 2026 for the installation of the work and its inauguration.

For the moment the biquette does not have a name. “School children will be asked to give it a name. It is a project that future generations will have to take on, because art passes through children. And that’s the main thing”insists Michel Audiard.