This week’s #artistinfocus is @robertmontgomeryghost @robertmontgomerystudio. Tune into our instagram story Q&A to learn more about his life and work. Montgomery will be answering your questions from 12pm. Born in 1972 in Chapelhall Scotland, Robert Montgomery is leading figure in conceptual and contemporary text art, based in London.
He is renowned for his large, public light installations and distinctive black and white billboard artworks. Montgomery studied fine art at the Edinburgh College of Art and later, he was the Core Program Artist in Residence at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston Texas. During his studies, Montgomery engaged with the work of poets including Sylvia Plath, as well as Situationist texts by Guy Debord. These early influences have guided his focus on the combination of verbal and visual presentations; a fusion that has since come to life through his light poems, billboards, fire poems, woodcuts, watercolours and painting. Montgomery explores themes of the urban world such as love and power. By situating his pieces in various contexts, Montgomery brings his text-based art into the public sphere to create a ‘free space of diverse voices’. As the writer Dane Weatherman states; ‘To encounter the work of Robert Montgomery is to make a tender encounter whose tenderness is enhanced by the public, communal quality of his work…’
His most recent exploration of text, light and colour through his new medium of painting was brought to fruition in his solo exhibition at JD Malat Gallery in 2019. Montgomery’s work has also been exhibited around the world, such as in the Aspen Art Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; a true demonstration of Montgomery’s global acclaim.