Changing Galway Derek Biddulph

A retrospective exhibition, dating from 1972, is simultaneously a celebration and a record of a Changing Galway, in this show of paintings. In a show of this size, a measure of unevenness is inevitable. There is, however, a hard core of painterly, well-seen, directly-handled street scapes from the 1970s and 1980s such as Spanish Parade, Behind The Old Malt and many, pleasant studies of The Long Walk.

Though he records with panache the unusual, coloured facades of Cross St. and High St., Biddulph's strength seems to lie in his monochrome and semi-monochrome direct statements, as in Low Tide, which exude that indefinable ambience that is Galway.

In The Old and New (1996) there are adumbrations that the growth of contemporary architecture will perhaps stifle the city's mediaeval heart.