One of the things about liv­ing in a great city like Welling­ton is that there are a hell of a lot of things to take for grant­ed.

I men­tion this because while lis­ten­ing to Don McGlashan in Civic Square the oth­er day he men­tioned that Auck­land does­n’t real­ly have any civic art. I’m not sure that’s entire­ly true… But, in the spir­it of parochial one-upman­ship I thought I’d bring you some of Welling­ton’s oft-over­looked art and sculp­ture.

Why oft-over­looked? Well, we have the Welling­ton Sculp­ture Trust and its glam­our­puss art all over the blim­min place, but there’s also a lot of small­er, less noticed stuff that we here at the Welling­ton­ista want to cel­e­brate.

DSC00197 So with no fur­ther ado, here is a sculp­ture. And ain’t it a lit­tle cutie?

The real ques­tion is of course whether you recog­nise it. And you prob­a­bly don’t. This of course being the prob­lem with a place like Welling­ton, some­times there’s so much bloody pub­lic art you can’t walk three feet with­out trip­ping over the lat­est “abstract some­thing”…

But I digress. So what is it?!

The pho­to in ques­tion, if don’t recog­nise it, is of The Pig and it cur­rent­ly resides in Civic Square. Its most com­mon fea­ture (and usage) is as a seat if you’re a bit pooped. It’s very com­fy, and this should be encour­aged.

A bit of inter­web inves­ti­ga­tion reveals that The Pig was sculpt­ed by Alan Hobbs (of Oamaru) in 1995.

And that’s all I got.

If you have more infor­ma­tion, we’d love to hear it!