Uncertain in its course since opening two years back with a Basil Blackshaw retrospective, the Ormeau Baths Gallery, now marketed under the OBG logo, still lacks street signage and a permanent nameplate. Customer numbers, which not surprisingly have been uncomfortably low, should pick up with this entertaining Perspectives exhibition, mounted as a result of a £10,000 prize open competition.
The judges were Paul Hedge of the Hale Gallery, who raves in the catalogue about the city's Chinese restaurants, Slavka Sverakova of the University of Ulster, who hesitates on predicting the exhibition will increase visitor numbers, and Louise Dompierre of New York, who does see the submitted work narrowing the gap between art and audience.
So of course there are winners: first, Dave Shipsides for his delightful Stone Bridge of distinctively ergonomic wall-mounted climbers' aides; then Theo Sims with his massive red neon bull horns, Blaise Drummond's technically superb oils, and Fiona Larkin's leather-bound Sand-Bagged Arse object.
Already there are quibbles. All work submitted was to be original, un-exhibited, but Shipside's installation resoundingly echoes his recent Catalyst Arts Show, Sims revealed not dissimilar horns by Chicago's stockyards proposing them as an irony on US macho imperialism. Larkin's work could be seen as an offshoot of Christo's famous weighted down wedding dress. But then Hirst has pickled many a creature.
Still this is, in the main, vivacious user-friendly art from a generation deserving the OBG's spaces - from Dermot Seymour's accusing cow through Susan Philippz's haunting Santa Lucia sound piece to Anne Ryan's splendid pastiche of Remington's cowhands gone astray.