Dan

Being on the outskirts of Manchester and the edge of Salford.

The three sculptures named collectively as Minut Men and individually as Hope, Faith and Charity were unveiled (published) in 1967 to stand in front of the newly built Technology College. In an interview the sculptor, William Mitchell, I remember him saying something along the lines of ‘I do not give a hoot if you don’t like them as long as you look at them’. The sculptures have a fast, frantic and incessant finish to them that rides alongside this mis-quote.

The three sculptures each twelve feet tall-ish are cast our of a variety of coloured concrete cast in polystyrene moulds.

I can not help but pull similarities between the surface aesthetic and the spirit the sculptures were made in … to makes sense or nonsense of the city. Something about how a city needs shaking up, and to have moments of oddity and surrealism to puncture what a place is supposed to be.

Looking and traveling today down Broard Street traveling from Salford into the city of Manchester.

The sculptures stand while the urban sprawl swells up on business parks. With this the sculptures are muted or distanced slightly by the swathes of concrete clad buildings, erected in the decades proceeding Minut Men. There is no impetuous or notion of wanting to push or divide attraction, they play as wells for normalised and safeguarded taste.