“Once up­on a Fete,” is an art ex­hi­bi­tion with a dif­fer­ence.

It’s one that de­picts car­ni­val of yes­ter­year through signs which were used as the main tool for pro­mo­tion of fetes and events.

Sign artist Bruce Cay­onne, who has over 30 years in sign cre­ation, held an in­ter­est­ing dis­play of his work, which de­tailed the his­to­ry of Car­ni­val and who cit­i­zens were dur­ing the sea­son.

“These posters are to bring back some mem­o­ries of the 90s when they had these large fete events be­fore all-in­clu­sive. This is an ex­hi­bi­tion where peo­ple can come in and then feel that car­ni­val vibes that they are re­al­ly look­ing for now and, es­pe­cial­ly that it is Car­ni­val Tues­day, you can come in here and just look at the posters and even get some mem­o­ries, prob­a­bly good or bad,” Cay­onne said.

Cay­onne was in­stru­men­tal in the pro­mo­tion of mega-events in the late 90s from Brass fes­ti­val to WASA fete.

He said for peo­ple com­ing to the ex­hi­bi­tion, the biggest thing they will be get­ting out of it.

“Is to see the per­son be­hind it be­cause some peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly grow up in it and grow up see­ing it and nev­er knew it had one per­son be­hind it.”

He said this re­flec­tion of what the sign busi­ness now shows how far the coun­try and Car­ni­val have come. But he lament­ed that the busi­ness has di­min­ished.

“Well 95 per cent of my busi­ness for signs is dead. It start­ed off with the many FM ra­dio bands that came on­stream and then it went in­to the dig­i­tal ad­ver­tis­ing, which is the dig­i­tal ban­ners and, of course, Face­book and so­cial me­dia came,” he stat­ed.

Cay­onne recre­at­ed most of the art­work that would have stood out at that time for the ex­hi­bi­tion. He added there will be more to come.