The sculptor Antony Gormley has complained to the Vote Leave campaign after the group emblazoned its anti-EU logo on his Angel of the North statue.

The message “Vote Leave Take Control” with a red ballot box was projected on the 54-metre wingspan of the sculpture near Gateshead in Tyne and Wear last week. It prompted Gormley to send a letter to the group, which claims to be the official leave campaign. Its high-profile members include the justice secretary, Michael Gove, and Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston.

Sent to Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, the letter seen by the Chronicle says: “As an artist with a substantial reputation in the United Kingdom and worldwide, it amounts to ‘passing off’ to suggest a false endorsement by, or by connection with, Sir Antony in connection with the activities and political purposes of Vote Leave Limited.

“Presumably the reputation of the work and its instantly recognisable character were the reasons that it was selected for the projection or digital manipulation.”

The Angel of the North, one of Britain’s most distinctive pieces of public art, has been hijacked before. In 2014, the supermarket chain Morrisons projected an image of a baguette on to the wings of Gormley’s sculpture. The supermarket subsequently apologised.

A few months after it was unveiled in 1998, some Newcastle United fans draped a giant replica No 9 shirt, in tribute to the club’s former centre-forward Alan Shearer, across the chest of the statue using fishing lines, rubber balls and catapults.

Gormley has described his sculpture as a link between the region’s coal-mining past and the information age. “The hilltop site is important and has the feeling of being a megalithic mound. When you think of the mining that was done underneath the site, there is a poetic resonance. Men worked beneath the surface in the dark. Now, in the light, there is a celebration of this industry.”

A Gateshead council spokesperson said: “It’s very disappointing that our iconic structures have been misused in this way, particularly as the council welcomes the benefits that Gateshead residents receive from UK membership of the European Union.

“It’s also somewhat ironic that both the Angel of the North and Baltic [art centre] actually benefited from European regional development funding, along with many other important projects in Gateshead.”