In partnership with Atelier Imago, an artist-run centre in Moncton, New Brunswick, Centre[3] presented an off-site installation titled The Road Sign Project. Artists were invited to design road signs that drew on the language and shorthand of email and text messaging, integrating digital-age vernacular into the visual grammar of traditional signage. The resulting works were installed at various locations throughout Hamilton’s city limits.
Artists selected imagery that echoed the symbols and syntax of digital communication, deliberately disrupting the conventional relationship between sign and site. While the signs adopted the familiar format of road signage, the content they conveyed was intentionally ambiguous, challenging viewers to decode their meanings and provoking reflection, curiosity, or even disorientation. Sixteen artists participated in the project. Centre[3] specifically invited Shelly Bahl, Brendan Fernandes, Will Kwan, and Micah Lexier, whose practices align closely with the project’s conceptual and aesthetic concerns. Their inclusion, alongside artists from Moncton’s predominantly Francophone (Acadian) community, introduced linguistic diversity and layered complexity to the installation. The contrasting interpretations of colloquial language across English and French contexts added further nuance and visual tension to the works.
Collectively, the participating artists engaged public space in ways that encouraged viewers to question not only how art functions in the built environment, but also how meaning is constructed, translated, and experienced within these shifting contexts.
