Sign Language, 2014/15

Barchael
(Barry Whittaker & Michael Bernhardt)
An exhibition celebrating information overload and status updates, as channeled through early 20th century sign painting and roadside advertising.

Sign Language developed from an ongoing interest in language as a system prone to slippage and misinterpretation. The project operates as a sign-based intervention within public space, borrowing the visual logic of graffiti, labels, faded advertisements, and logos. These are forms of text designed to be read quickly and often without reflection. These familiar structures are altered through processes of dissolution, deconstruction, and contradiction, interrupting their assumed clarity.

Public space is saturated with signs and signals that frame daily experience. Advertising, social media, political messaging, and informal declarations are part of this environment. Participation is largely unavoidable. Rather than adding a clear message to this field, Sign Language introduces ambiguity and asks how meaning shifts when persuasive language is partially withheld, disrupted, or allowed to fail.