Richard Wilson hears Michael Caine's voice and Eddie Izzard's laugh at the De La Warr Pavilion

Installation: Richard Wilson – Hang On A Minute Lads, I've Got A Great Idea..., De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, until October 1 2012

Last Sunday, Eddie Izzard – the principal sponsor of this commission, named after Michael Caine’s imperilled announcement as he stared into the abyss from a bounty-laden coach teetering atop a mountain in The Italian Job – played a gig on the top of the glorious old De La Warr Pavilion.

A patron of the Bexhill landmark, Izzard was entertaining a twilight crowd against the backdrop of the full-size replica coach, which now appears poised to drop off the edge of this famous façade thanks to Richard Wilson’s eye for sculpture and engineering.

Wilson is an artist with previous: a Liverpool Capital of Culture gig which sawed part of a building off, a section of ship moored near the Millennium Dome, an installation using waste oil. So it’s no wonder that London 2012 organisers wanted him to create something as part of their programme, backed by the Arts Council’s Grants for the Arts fund.

“I wanted the building to be part of the work,” he says, explaining that the red, white and blue colours of his vehicle with vertigo make it “a flag-waving work” for the Olympics. “Viewing the coastal horizon made me aware of the building’s edges, and that they were just as important as the sum of the surfaces.”

He is fascinated by the film it is inspired by, in which Caine and his gang of robbers could only balance the coach with stacks of gold. The quintessential Britishness of the drama, from the Mini getaway car to the cor blimey sense of humour and the strains of the self-preservation society, also appeals.

“Producing this cinematic moment as a sculpture was not just about a sculptural daring,” he reasons. “It was more a metaphor about the absolute limits of anything, being engaging.”

Gravity certainly doesn’t seem to have been much of a limitation for Wilson, whose most recent commission was for Heathrow’s Terminal 2.

“I think this is a perfect time to hang a large bus off the edge of a building in a seaside town,” adds Izzard, as if to imply that there might ever be a time when that concept would seem excessively ambitious.

“By the end of 2012 I would hope that the word goes out from our country that not only do we run excellent world events, but also we balance coaches on the edges of buildings like no one else ever could.”

• The De La Warr Pavilion is open 10am-6pm (8pm Friday and Saturday).