Robert Montgomery - 'Shiny Colourful Amusements for the Walls of the Bourgeoisie’

He’s been branded the text-art Banksy, punk artist and melancholic post-Situationist and now poet and artist Robert Montgomery is bringing his first, UK solo exhibition, Shiny Colourful Amusements for the Walls of the Bourgeoisie, to JD Malat Gallery from 1 October until 1 November 2019.

The Scottish-born, London-based artist is famed for taking the written word to public spaces, from “fire poems” made from burning letters to giant, illuminated words on mountains, empty swimming pools and old vans - they have gained such a strong following, people have even had his work tattooed on themselves. Now he is bringing a collection of work inside for his most ambitious exhibition to date, at the Mayfair gallery, which coincides with Frieze London and will feature a selection of lightworks made especially for the show. The exhibition will also celebrate Montgomery’s return to other mediums, like painting and a electrifying exploration of colour and language. Montgomery says: “I am thrilled to be showing at JD Malat Gallery. “These rooms have a great heritage, Jean-David has breathed new life into Mayfair with the space at 30 Davies Street and he has very good taste, his is one of the most exciting new galleries in London. "The great space here gives us a scale in which we are able to present a show that is both slightly retrospective on my work alongside a series of new paintings." JD Malat Gallery will exhibit a selection of Montgomery’s newest lightworks, which echo his important installations of the past at the old Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, the Kochi Biennale in 2012 and his installation "THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE BECOME GHOSTS INSIDE OF YOU, AND LIKE THIS YOU KEEP THEM ALIVE” at the De La Warr Pavilion in 2010. This piece became one of the most talked about artworks of the last decade, and was shared more than 24 million times online. 

Montgomery has enjoyed success with a host of solo exhibitions across the world, most recently at the Aspen Art Museum in January and was shortlisted for the UK Holocaust Memorial, showcased at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. He has also had a strong Biennale presence worldwide, representing Britain at Kochi Biennale in 2012 and the Yinchuan Biennale in 2016. While many artists become synonymous with one artistic medium, Robert is synonymous with a particular kind of poetic phrasing — loosely applying the principle of "concrete poetry” across an array of media, he brings words alive in watercolour, fire poems, solar powered light installations, woodcut panels, billboards and paintings. His work straddles the tradition of contemporary language art seen in artists like Tracey Emin, Jenny Holzer and Lawrence Weiner, and an older tradition of concrete poetry that goes back to Guillaume Apollinaire and in Britain, to Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edward Lucie-Smith. Speaking of his work, author Dane Weatherman explains: “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. "To encounter his work is to have your body filled with a sad thunder and your head filled with a sad light. He is a complete artist and works in language, light, paper, space. "He engages completely with the urban world with a translucent poetry. His work arrives at us through a kind of lucid social violence. "No one has blended language, form and light in such a direct way.”