THE CHOICE of Ronnie Hughes's approachable exhibition of large canvases, Excavations, is indeed an apposite one for Derry's Context Gallery, moved now to its new venue nestling directly under its mistress, the (refurbished) Playhouse Theatre. The city itself has of late become a building site, with huge modern shopping complexes looming up against and over its 300 year old walls. Centuries ago, no sheriff would have allowed his defences to be so overshadowed. Now, majestic perspectives of the walls are gone for ever, planners having done away with this part of Derry's unique heritage.

Hughes's work speaks much of similar matters. Part I of his show, City Reformed, is made up of large canvases suggesting a human scale cityscape interrupted by photo realist inserts of post modernist buildings under construction. Part II, Urban Revisions, has even larger mixed media canvases. Here, a crowded mix of human figures (some fully realised, others semaphored in Sixties poster monotone) seems to emerge from a mutely coloured watery background, then disappear into a grey and polluted foggy foreground.