A Manchester monster mash-up

While on my street art hunt around the city centre during the Hallowe’en weekend I was also on the trail of fourteen huge inflatable monsters situated on various buildings as part of the weekend’s family attractions. Not the sort of thing any normal adult without kids in tow would do but I was in the city centre anyway and they would probably make some amusing photos so why not?

Having made a note of the different monsters and their locations I found the first one close to Victoria Station just after I arrived in the city and the next one wasn’t too far from there, while several more were in locations fairly close together so I photographed those before embarking on my street art hunt.

Superstar Monstar at the AO Arena

Eye-Scream at Cathedral Gardens

Snozzer at Next

Scary Gary at Exchange Square

Sprites at Selfridges

Horrible Harvey at Harvey Nichols

Spooky Nelson in New Cathedral Street

At one point during the day it started to rain so I took shelter for a while in the Arndale shopping centre and was lucky enough to catch the Monsters Rock! Party Procession headed by a small brass band playing the iconic ‘Monster Mash’ song. With skeletons, stilt walkers and monster puppets the parade was very colourful and not having previously known about it I was glad I’d chosen just that time to be in the Arndale. Luckily the rain didn’t last for long so I was soon able to resume my street art and monster hunt.

Ooey and Gooey at the Arndale

A few of the monsters were spread out in locations well out of the main centre, three of them a fair distance away which contributed greatly to the total 8.2 miles I covered, and while it would have been easy to not bother looking for them I didn’t want to give up without finding all fourteen. Fortunately the final two were near Angel Meadow Park just a short walk from Victoria Station so once I’d added those to my collection I didn’t have far to go to for the train back home.

Rex-tacular at the Royal Exchange

Dave at the Oast House, Spinningfields

Lockelin at Whitworth Locke, Princess Street

Krampus on Aytoun Street

Sucker the Sea Monster at Meadowside Apartments

Bloodoo Child at New Century Hall

The Manchester monsters were all designed, created and installed by Luke Egan and Pedro Estrellas who, along with a team of highly skilled technicians, are known as Designs in Air, producing inflatable sculptures and installations for hire and commission, with Bloodoo Child being their newest creation. Do I have a favourite out of these? – probably the second one as it looks to be quite a happy creature. Coupled with my search for the latest street art and more than one occasion where I doubled back on my route it had been quite a tiring few hours but I came back home happy that I’d done what I set out to do.