FOR the Victorians, a glimpse of ankle was enough to set pulses racing. And that's more or less all there is to see so far of a new sculpture which will grace the Manchester skyline.

But by the end of the year, this statue will be brazenly full frontal - and a triumphant marriage of art and engineering.

The 33ft-high bronze piece, called the Venus Trinity, will stand next to a new office development being built in Trafford Quays.

The Manchester Evening News has been given a sneak preview of the sculpture, which will feature three 13ft-tall "very life-like" sculptures of naked women holding hands on top of a 20ft-high plinth.

Artist Colin Spofforth has been commissioned to create the sculpture by landowner Peel Holdings and is working on it in his Altrincham warehouse.

The sculpture will weigh almost five tonnes, and, when complete, will be the result of more than two years work by Colin and his team and is both an artistic and engineering triumph.

Each naked figure leans out at a 60-degree angle, with a distance of 12ft between each face, and only a small circular base for the feet. The sculpture dives out of a column of white water that shoots out from the surrounding lake. The water reaches up 18ft to the base of the sculpture, with an output of 22 litres per second.

Colin, 40, says the realistic nature of the work challenges perceptions of sculpture as being old fashioned.

Colin, who created the bronze runner outside the City of Manchester Stadium for last year's Commonwealth Games, said: "This sculpture presented me and my team with a series of unique challenges - not least in finding the right subject on which to base the figure in the sculpture.

"Like The Runner at the City of Manchester Stadium, the technical skills of all concerned will prove crucial to the success of this project."

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