Of the earth and faces from the races

The name Leopoldo Novoa may be familiar to some festival-goers. He is a Paris-based artist, of Spanish and Argentinian origin, and he first showed in Dublin in the old David Hendriks Gallery. He also had a substantial show in the Ulster Museum. That was all some time ago, however. Now his work is the subject of the largest exhibition of the Festival, at the Arts Centre in Dominick Street.

He is an exponent of what has been called "matter painting". The surfaces of his pictures are built up to form rugged-looking sculptural reliefs. Variously utilising what look like lava dust, ash, sand, charcoal and comparable materials, they have a sombre, earthy feeling. Patterns are scored into the skin of the work, and holes are cut or punched right through it. The overall effect is reminiscent of the type of Spanish textural painting exemplified by Antonio Tapies. But, where Tapies is a master of the casual, off-hand gesture, whose compositions look as if they have either happened by pure chance or in a spontaneous outburst, Novoa is more studied and cautious. In fact, you could say that his work is Tapies filtered through School of Paris. Still, it's very capably done and there are some outstanding pieces in the show.

One point of difference is the way he provides intimations that the surfaces, though they project an air of stony toughness, are in reality comparatively delicate things. This happens when we glimpse the empty space behind the thin layer of fabric and dust.

Novoa's exhibition, incidentally, provides the opportunity for a preview of the Galway Arts Centre's revamped exhibition space. Though the building doesn't officially reopen until September, the Novoa, and a smaller photographic show by Martin Parr, are in effect a trial run. There are two additional gallery spaces and everything about the existing ones has been substantially upgraded. So far it looks pretty good, and it will certainly be the most versatile, highest spec exhibition venue in the city.

Parr's images, boldly arranged in a tightly-packed grid, were taken over two years at the Galway Races. They are an example of his new, brutalist style. He goes in close and snatches fragments, ruthlessly focusing on people absorbed in the drama of the racetrack. Actually, the L-shaped bank of images makes up an extremely effective montage, creating a powerful cumulative impression. You scan the grid and assemble the details, the excited faces, the champagne bottles, the programmes, the pencils tucked behind ears and get a sense of the rush and crush of the moment.

But Parr ups the ante by pushing the colour into uncomfortable garishness, like primitive colour television. People's faces are bright, blotchy pink or orange. And you do feel that he often goes, for maximum distortion in expression. This does seem unduly unfair to his subjects.

It's good to see the Spanish Parade Gallery, next to the Spanish Arch at the start of the Long Walk, again pressed into service. This time around, Anne McLeod has done a terrific installation of her Wishing Wall.

You may remember that for the original version of this project, she appeared on The Late Late Show and invited people to send her wishbones and wishes. Arranged in a grid on the huge curved wall of the gallery, she now has something like 7,000 wishbones. A suitably heavy ledger on a podium records the accompanying wishes. And visitors, having taken in the sobering prospect of so many varied desires - for peace, for wealth, for happiness, for Boyszone - can add their own individual wishes to the ledger. Going through the wish-list is an essential part of the experience. Whether people have responded whimsically or in deadly earnest, it's always intriguing and makes for a terrific, though-provoking, interactive installation.

Two years ago, during the Festival, Patrick O'Reilly mounted a mind-boggling exhibition of kinetic sculptures at a temporary venue, a building that is now just a hole in the ground. The show was hugely popular and really did launch his career. He has been extremely busy since, showing in the Hugh Lane in Dublin, in London and in Paris. But then, one suspects that he is always extremely busy, and that he is happiest when busy, for he attacks his work with a prodigious, unstoppable energy and inventiveness.

Now he's back in Galway, this time at the Aula Maxima in the university. It was an inspired piece of placement. His pieces, with their slightly sinister fairground undertones are extremely effective in between the arches of the darkened stone interior. He is able to light each work for maximum dramatic effect. His works include Breathing Bag, an old gladstone that wheezes as if alive, three creepy boxes in which spectral hands and a face seem to try to break through a veil of gauze, and a trio of grotesque figures gathered around an upright piano. The latter, with their swollen, melted extremities, make a really nightmarish spectacle.

O'Reilly has a moralistic streak that is evident in satirical pieces on the madness of everyday life. His The Yes What Is It You Wanted To See Me About Ride, with its saddled desk jockey looming over a diminutive teddy bear, is fairly typical and particularly successful, though he can be heavy-handed in delivering his messages. A series of bronzes represents a new departure. They recall the work of Barry Flanagan, but they look promising.

Across the quad and downstairs, the low-ceilinged gallery presents limitations on the scale and nature of the work to be exhibited. But Jack Rutberg from Los Angeles has traditionally come up with fine, modestly-scaled shows that fit and are at the same time enlightening, and this year is no exception. His show of lithographs and paintings on paper by the American artist Sam Francis is a first in Ireland.

When Francis died in 1994 his reputation as a formidable individualist, whose style of colour field abstraction drew together the influences of the US, Europe and the East, had long been established. This show is in effect a mini-retrospective, spanning Francis's career, from the stunning gouache, California Blue Coast, from 1949 to a colour lithograph from 1979. California Blue Coast is a beautiful little painting that belies its scale by evoking a sense of space. It is akin in feeling to some of Barrie Cooke's landscapes.

The most enjoyable pieces in the show, for me, are the coloured grids from the 1970s. What's great about these is the fact that they should have degenerated into total messes - Francis doesn't paint over his mistakes, he uses the acrylic translucently. Try to build up dense overlapping layers of colour like that and the chances are it will become a mush. But he weaves a complex, spontaneous order out of the free play of liquid paint quite brilliantly.

If you head over to Nun's Island from the University Road, you can't miss the bright orange of Alice Maher's mermaids bobbing on the surface of the water. There are about 15 of them, and they look like an army of Amazonian giantesses heading downstream. They are startling presences who dramatise their surroundings.

Ted Turton has been Festival Director for the past two years, and this year he's also involved in another capacity, showing pastels and digitally printed photographs at the Kenny Gallery. He is concerned with the landscape and, particularly, the skies. The photographs take an unconventional horizontal format, accommodating the sheer expanse of land and sky. They are admirably straightforward images - that is, while they faithfully reflect the spectacular nature of the landscape and its wild, extraordinary beauty, they are not hung up on a romanticised vision of it all, and cheerfully accept the signs of human presence. They are much better than the pastels, which are altogether more tentative and conventional in their approach.

If you see people loitering by the windows of the Festival booking Office at the Cornstore in Middle Street and periodically guffawing with laughter, don't worry. They're just enjoying the wit of Tom Mathews. Invited to have a show of his cartoons, he opted for the shop-front venue rather than a more conventional gallery setting. Judging by the reaction even as the works were being installed, he seems to have done the right thing. Mathews is a classic cartoonist in the sense that he mines everyday experiences and language to come up with clever, revealing puns.

In the midst of the bustle of Eyre Square Shopping Centre, Gita Turda's digitally manipulated photographs of Romania, Have You Seen Dracula? both dismantle the conventional notion of Transylvania and provide an insight into the reality of life in Romania today. Sometimes the effect is pure picture-postcard, but more often, taken in conjunction with poems printed beside the images, there is much more going on.

Finally, Marylene Negro's video, featuring the participation of numerous Galway people offering their views on whatever they liked, wasn't yet up and running but is now, and I never got a chance to see the sand sculpture being created by Niall Magee and Fergus Mulvaney. It is also worth checking out the small show of work by Artspace artists at The Logan Gallery in St Anthony's Place. Edel Hayes and Catherine O Leanachain stand out.

The Galway Arts Festival continues until July 26th