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!