The Whole Hogg: Drawings by Barry Callaghan

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

This supplement to Callaghan’s Hogg: The Poems and Drawings (1997) was
published to coincide with an exhibition held at the Carleton University
Art Gallery in 1997. The book is divided into three main parts: an
introductory essay by noted visual artist and teacher Vera Frenkel; 26
pages of reproductions of the drawings and sketches that were presented
at the exhibition; and an essay by Michael Bell, director of the
Carleton Art Gallery. A biographical sketch of Barry Callaghan is also
included.

The book shares with the exhibition an attempt “to investigate the
relationship of word and image in visual art.” Frenkel’s essay,
“The Hidden Precinct of Desire,” discusses the exhibition in terms
of how, where, and why “word, flesh and image meet and change
places.” Woven into her critique are biographical details about both
Hogg (the subject of the exhibition) and Callaghan (the creator of the
exhibition). The reproductions provide fascinating examples of
Callaghan’s hybrid portrayals of text and image. Some are
black-and-white, others are color, and still others are borderline
surreal; many are sexually explicit. Michael deals extensively and
learnedly with the works in the exhibition and the mythic processes
whereby they were created.