群交AV

Scottish, b. 1972

Robert Montgomery is a Scottish-born, London-based contemporary artist and poet. He is renowned for his large-scale light works using words and poetry installed in public spaces. As well as his evocative light poems, which use environmentally friendly LED lights, he is well known for his billboard poems, fire poems, woodcuts, paintings and watercolours. Exploring how the constant flood of images in the modern world has alienated us from our authentic voice, his works explore political and ecological themes, with particular focus on the tension between the digital and natural world. The distinctly lyrical voice of his visual poetry invites us to reconnect with nature, offering a moment of introspection in an ever more hurried world.

Montgomery studied at Edinburgh College of Art, completing a BA and an MFA. Initially focusing on painting, with his practice developed into text and installation works during his time as the Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1995-97). He has been a visiting artist at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, University of Newcastle and Chelsea College of Art, London.

The American artist James Turrell, pioneer of the Light and Space movement, visited Montgomery’s studio at the MFA Houston and has been a significant influence on him. Montgomery also credits Jenny Holzer and Lawrence Weiner as influences, as well as critical theorists Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes and Guy Debord.

Barthes’ work on semiotics, Mythologies (1957), was particularly formative for Montgomery in his exploration of how speech and culturally enforced modes of communication shape how we think about the world. Interested in language’s power to articulate universal feelings in a collective consciousness, Montgomery developed his billboard poems, fuelled by a passion for Modernist poetry.

By transforming these spaces of spectacle and passive consumption into portals of poetic inspiration, he provided a therapeutic and spiritual space for reflection. For Montgomery, the slowness of words commands our attention, inviting a moment of introspection. Inspired by the power of street art as an energising and democratising force, his works capture an interior voice that resonates with humanity and is accessible to all.

His billboard and light poems have been installed in urban spaces to connect with the psychogeography of a city: as well as being featured in the streets of Paris, London and New York, he was commissioned to create a site-specific work, Echoes of Voices in the High Towers, displayed in the grounds of Berlin’s former Tempelhof Airport. His work is held in collections around the world, including the Albright Knox in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan and the LVMH Collection.

In 2021 the Albright Knox Museum in New York acquired his major large scale light work, The Stars Pulled Down for Real. In 2022 his work was included in La Suite de l’Histoire at the Musée du Louvre in Paris (the Louvre’s first exhibition of contemporary art) and in 2024 Xavier Roland at the BAM Museum, in Mons, Belgium, commissioned a series of 7 large scale public works from Montgomery to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Surrealism. His work is hugely popular on the internet: the piece The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You has been shared online more than 20 million times.

His light work All Palaces are Temporary Palaces was featured at the Venice Biennale in 2011. He was the UK artist for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (the first Indian Contemporary Art Biennale) in 2012 and the Yinchuan Biennale in 2016. The latter was a 150-metre-long installation which spanned a river bridge outside the Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art, China.

Montgomery’s free verse, while concisely crafted, is replete with pathos, capturing a ghostly interior voice. This desire to create beauty from sadness parallels his other poetic influences, such as Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin. Montgomery finds magic in the mundane: from urban environments to vast, rugged landscapes. While his poems and paintings are infused with melancholy, they are also hopeful: expressing faith in the power of art and nature to heal us.

The Surrealist poet André Breton is a significant influence on his writing, and he credits the Surrealists with ‘planting a seed in [his] mind that you can be, should be, a painter and a poet at the same time.’ French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, famed for his ‘calligrammes’, or concrete poetry, is also a significant influence on Montgomery, particularly in shaping his artistic process as simultaneously graphic and poetic. With his wife, actor, filmmaker and poet, Greta Bellamacina, he is the co-founder of the poetry press New River Press, which publishes radical contemporary British poetry.

Montgomery has returned to his artistic roots by painting landscapes. His light installations – setting poetry against twilit landscapes – although outwardly very contemporary, are, in Montgomery’s own words: ‘in some way, for me, an extension of 19th century Romantic landscape painting, with the ghosts of Caspar David Friedrich and Turner always present in my mind’. Many of the paintings in this series have a physical relationship to the light works, based on the location of their installation. Often captured from the perspective of a moving vehicle, Montgomery superimposes lines of his poetry over the landscapes, in his characteristic bold capitalised font.
His light work All Palaces are Temporary Palaces was featured at the Venice Biennale in 2011. He was the UK artist for the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (the first Indian Contemporary Art Biennale) in 2012 and the Yinchuan Biennale in 2016. The latter was a 150-metre-long installation which spanned a river bridge outside the Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art, China.

Montgomery’s free verse, while concisely crafted, is replete with pathos, capturing a ghostly interior voice. This desire to create beauty from sadness parallels his other poetic influences, such as Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin. Montgomery finds magic in the mundane: from urban environments to vast, rugged landscapes. While his poems and paintings are infused with melancholy, they are also hopeful: expressing faith in the power of art and nature to heal us.

The Surrealist poet André Breton is a significant influence on his writing, and he credits the Surrealists with ‘planting a seed in [his] mind that you can be, should be, a painter and a poet at the same time.’ French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, famed for his ‘calligrammes’, or concrete poetry, is also a significant influence on Montgomery, particularly in shaping his artistic process as simultaneously graphic and poetic. With his wife, actor, filmmaker and poet, Greta Bellamacina, he is the co-founder of the poetry press New River Press, which publishes radical contemporary British poetry.

Montgomery has returned to his artistic roots by painting landscapes. His light installations – setting poetry against twilit landscapes – although outwardly very contemporary, are, in Montgomery’s own words: ‘in some way, for me, an extension of 19th century Romantic landscape painting, with the ghosts of Caspar David Friedrich and Turner always present in my mind’. Many of the paintings in this series have a physical relationship to the light works, based on the location of their installation. Often captured from the perspective of a moving vehicle, Montgomery superimposes lines of his poetry over the landscapes, in his characteristic bold capitalised font.

Montgomery’s M20 Paintings (2024) are images captured from his car window on the road between London and his studio in Kent. The landscape here is seen in a brief glimpse: ‘you are hurtling by on

the motorway, and you see brief glimpses of beauty, the landscape in sunlight, how the light plays on the trees in a beautiful field, glimpses of nature that you are kept separate from and can’t quite reach. There’s a longing to be in that landscape that, from the road, we can’t quite fulfil.’

The artist’s monumental light works and landscape paintings featured in 群交AV’s exhibition, Songs of the Open Road (2024). The exhibition was Montgomery’s first with 群交AV, and explored the relationship between landscapes, journeys and the poetic tradition. In October 2024, Montgomery unveiled It’s Not About Winning, 4 large-scale public art projects at Wembley Stadium, Principality Stadium, the University of Stirling swimming pool and the Ulster Boxing High Performance Centre at Ulster University. Opening with a dramatic reading by Clare Balding, the project celebrated the extraordinary achievements of seven British sporting figures, who the artist calls ‘Game Changers’. In February 2025, the Albright–Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, opened Hi-Vis, an exhibition which looks at the practices behind public art, featuring Montgomery’s light work, All Palaces Are Temporary Palaces.

Most recently, Montgomery’s work has been featured in 群交AV’s group show Sacred and Profane (2025), which seeks to examine how contemporary artists engage with art history and religious iconography to address modern issues. One of the featured works, Annunciation Painting (New Countries) (2019), displays the powerful influence of artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Blake, painted in a style intended to resemble faded 15th century tempera frescos. His affiliation with Blake is particularly important, as evidenced in a 2025 painting titled William Blake’s Hat, which takes his oeuvre in a new direction. The ethereal composition includes a self-portrait and reinterprets a 1912 mural in Chelsea Old Town Hall, replacing the figures with some of the artist’s friends and New River Press published poets.

TRAINING

BA Edinburgh College of Art, 1st Class Honours, 1993
MFA Edinburgh College of Art, 1995
Core Program Artist-in-Residence, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1995-97

PERMANENT COLLECTIONS

Albright Knox Collection, Buffalo, New York, NY
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
LVMH Collection.
Black Gold Museum, Riyahd
Edinburgh Art Festival Collection, Edinburgh, UK
Cass Sculpture Foundation, Chichester, UK
Manja Gideon Collection, Geneva, Switzerland
Florence Welch Collection, London, UK
Michael Stipe Collection, New York, NY
Wassner Collection, New York, NY
Henrik Wobbe Collection, Hamburg, Germany
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Yinchuan, China
Benoit Pierre Emery Collection, Paris, France
Collection of Patrick Van Ommeslaeghe, Antwerp, Belgium
Charlie and Elizabeth Cetin Collection, London, UK
Gianni and Michael Alen-Buckley Collection, London, UK
UK Municipal Collection Saalfelden Leogang, Salzburg, Austria
Artshare Collection, Los Angeles, CA
Luepertz Collection, Berlin, Germany
Jacques Esseberg Collection, Paris and St Tropez, France
Dick Institute Collection, Scotland, UK
Casa dell Arte Collection, Bodrum, Turkey

SELECTED EXHIBTIONS

2025 Sacred and Profane, 群交AV, London, UK
2025 Hi-Vis, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
2024 Songs of the Open Road, 群交AV, London, UK
2024 Mons en Lumières BAM museum and city of Mons, Belgium
2023 Robert Montgomery: When We Are Gone The Trees Will Riot, UBP Monaco. [solo show]
2023 Robert Montgomery: Poem-Paintings and New Lightworks, MTArt at TM Lighting, London, Frieze week. [solo show]
2023 Architecture and Poetry, curated by Fabio Barry, Hay Castle, Hay-on-Wye, Wales, UK
2023 Tumultes, Danysz Gallery, Paris, France
2022 La Suite de l’Histoire, the Musée du Louvre, Jardin des Tuilieries, Paris, France
2022 Le Futur Expliqué aux Extraterrestres, Centre Culturel Jean Cocteau, Lilas, France
2022 Robert Montgomery: The Future Is An Invisible Playground, Madison Gallery, San Diego, CA
2022 Power! Light!, Kunstmuseum Wolsburg, Germany
2022 Urbain.es, La Condition Publique, Roubaix, France
2021 Salvage Paradise, Danysz Gallery, Paris, France [solo show]
2021 The Stars Pulled Down for Real, Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma Contemporary. Installation on the North Lawn [solo show]
2021 Grace of the Sun, Robert Montgomery X Little Sun at COP26 large scale solar powered light poem installation MTA Art Agency, Glasgow.
2021 The Green Path, The Museum of Perama, Athens, Greece.
2021 Recovery Poem, Commissioned by Emergency Exit Arts and Arts Council England. Brighton Festival and touring.
2020 O Sole Mio, Parasol Foundation for Contemporary Art, London, UK
2020 Body, Gaze, Power, Staatlichen Kunsthalle Baden-Baden and Stadtmuseum Baden-Baden, Germany
2020 Sharing Perama, public works Perama, Athens. The British Council, Swiss Embassy, Analix Forever and The J. F. Costopoulos Foundation
2020 Klagfarben Text: Visual Poetry for the 21st Century, British Council at the Lyrik Kabinett, Munich, Germany
2019 Libres, Centre d'art Contemporian, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
2019 Shiny Colourful Amusements for the Walls of the Bourgeoisie, JD Malat Gallery, London. [solo show]
2019 Robert Montgomery: Stoke Works, text fragments around the city of Stoke-on-Trent, curated by B-Arts
2019 The Beginning of Hope: Robert Montgomery, Galerie Analix-Forever, Geneva [solo show]
2019 Robert Montgomery: The City in Their Echo, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen Colorado [solo show]
2018 Paper Peace, Emergency Exit Arts and Arts Council England national touring project
2018 Estuary Poem for Wyndham Lewis, One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London, UK [solo show]
2018 In Our Dreams We See Forever, commission for the Royal Society for Blind Children, travelling the UK.
2018 E-Luminate Cambridge, Kings College Cambridge, UK
2018 Bombay Beach Biennale, Bombay Beach, CA
2018 New Generation, Madison Gallery, San Diego, CA
2018 La Prison Exposee, Champ-Dollon À Penthes, Geneva, Switzerland
2018, A Journey to Freedom, Tasmanian National Museum and Art Gallery
2017 Hammersmith Poem and Love Letters to Kazimir Malevich, Cob Gallery, London, UK [solo show]
2017 Frieze Billboards, billboard works, Shoreditch, East London, UK [solo project]
2017 Parasolstice: Robert Montgomery, Parasol Unit Art Foundation, London, UK [solo project]
2017 The UK Holocaust Memorial Shortlist, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
2017 Hammersmith Poem, Hammersmith Town Hall, London, UK [solo show]
2017 The Book of the Word, (curated by Michael Petry) Helsinki Contemporary, Helsinki, Finland
2017 Election Poem, Flying Leaps, London, UK
2017 NuArt Festival, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
2016 Year of the Propaganda Corrupted Plebiscites, Mannerheim Gallery, Paris, France [solo show]
2016 Year of the Corrupted Eclipse, Printspace, London, UK [solo show]
2016 Cardiff Contemporary, Cardiff, Wales, UK
2016 Yinchuan Biennale, Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art, China
2016 La Littorale- Biennale d'art Contemporain d'Anglet,, Anglet, Sud-Ouest France
2016 Nuart Festival, Stavanger, Norway
2016 A New Language: Root 1066 Festival, Hastings, UK
2016 The Crystal Ship, Oostende, Belgium
2016 Poetry For Change, Kulturno Informativni Centar, Zagreb, Croatia
2016 To Fast to Live Too Young to Die, solar powered installation for the Climate Coalition at Osterley Park, London, UK [solo project]
2016 Still Future, Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, Scotland, UK
2016 Icona Prize, Museo Mart, Verona
2015 Robert Montgomery, Cer Modern Museum, Ankara [solo show]
2015 Robert Montgomery, Istanbul’74, Istanbul [solo show]
2015 Chapter 6 in Which We Sit Like Docile Cattle While You Use the Aesthetics of Punk Rock to Sell Credit Cards Back to Us, Galerie Nuke and Instanbul ‘74, Galerie Nikki Diana Marquandt, Paris, France [solo show]
2015 ART COP 21" Paris, France
2015 Bodies Burning at the Edges, Thomas Beal, Robert Montgomery, Jacolby Satterwhite, Kiki Smith, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, New York, NY
2015 People You Love, installation at The Southbank Centre, London, for National Poetry Day [solo project]
2015 The Stars Pulled Down For Real, Public project for All Rise Seattle [solo show]
2015 Robert Montgomery, Istanbul’74, Istanbul, Turkey [solo show]
2015 Sunday in the Park with Ed, Display Gallery, London, UK
2015 I was dancing when I was 8 : as French protestant middle class diaspora panic reached its height around 1556, refugee goldsmiths arriving in high Calvinist Geneva landed in their new home of free-thought finding themselves forbidden from making jewelry or any other objects of idolatry”, and so were forced to begin their sullen and centuries long sexually-repressed fetishisation of watches + Smalltown Boy + the tragedy of Glasgow Rangers / a small but sustained cry against Calvin inspired by Marc Bolan and Bronski Beat, Galerie Analix Forever Geneva, Switzerland [solo show]
2015 Searock Songlines, Public project curated by Marc Fiedler Saalfelden Leogang, Austria [solo show]
2014 3 Poems About Buildings and Trees, Nuit Blanche Brussels, Belgium
2014 LA Billboard poems, curated by Do Art Foundation and Art Share, Los Angeles, CA [solo project]
2014 Louvre Fire Poem, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris, France
2014 [solo project], IST Festival, Istanbul, Turkey
2014 Piles of Dirt and Glass You Walk Upon. Galerie Colette, Paris, France [solo show]
2014 Fields of Vision, Grand Depart Tour de France, Yorkshire Festival, UK
2014 Ian Hamilton Finlay, Robert Montgomery, Lawrence Wiener. Anna Jil Lüpertz Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2014 Still Future, The Arts Complex, Edinburgh, UK
2013 Affordable Care, Manya Wynwood, Miami, FL
2013 Robert Montgomery, C24 Gallery, New York, NY [solo show]
2013 Quand l’art Prend la Ville, Defacto, La Défense, Paris, France
2013 Edinburgh Fire Poem, Commission for the Edinburgh Art Festival, The Mound, Edinburgh, UK
2013 In Dreams, Cob Gallery, London, UK
2013 Sculpture al Fresco III, Great Fosters, Surrey, UK
2013 City is Wilder, Installation at Kater Holzig, Anna Jil Lüpertz Gallery, Berlin, Germany
2013 Echoes of Voices in the High Towers, Galerie Nuke, Paris, France [solo show]
2013 Tokyo Billboards, Harajuko. Each X Other Projects
2012 The Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Fort Kochi, Kerala, India
2012 Closer, Spinello Projects, Miami, FL
2012 Le Printemps de Septembre a Toulouse, Curated by Paul Ardenne. Toulouse, France
2012 Robert Montgomery: Echoes of Voices in the High Towers, solo show part 2, Neue Berliner Räume, Stattbad Wedding, and billboard sites, Berlin, Germany
2012 From The Age of The Poets. Cy Twombly, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Robert Montgomery etc, Aanat & Zoo, Berlin, Germany
2012 Preposterous. La Scatola, London, UK
2012 Sublime · Kursiv. James Lee Byars, Christian Boltanski, Douglas Gordon, Robert Montgomery etc., Anna Jill Lupertz Gallery at Epicentro Art, Berlin, Germany
2012 Noir Clair, curated by Barbara Polla and Victor de Bonnecaze, Galerie Vanessa Quang, Paris, France
2012 Wealth, Mass, London, UK
2012 Oneliners, KOP, Breda, Netherlands
2012 Robert Montgomery: Echoes of Voices in the High Towers, solo show, Neue Berliner Räume, site of old Tempelhof Airport and billboard sites, Berlin, Germany
2012 Whenever An Angel, solo show, Galerie Analix-Forever, Geneva, Switzerland
2012 It Turned Out This Way cos You Dreamed it This Way, Solo show KK Outlet and billboard sites, London, UK
2012 A Gathering, (curated by Maria-Thalia Carras & Olga Hatzidaki), Athens Festival
2012 Art St Barth, Valentine de Badereau Gallery, St Barths
2011 Fire of Each Other, solo show Galerie Nuke, Paris, France
2011 And Like This You Keep Them Alive/On Love, Neue Berliner Räume. Berlin, Germany
2011 All Palaces Are Temporary Palaces, Courtyard of the Palais de Tokyo Paris, France
2011 The Streets Belong to No One, Truck on the streets of the Galata neighbourhood. Casa dell Arte project collateral to the 12th Istanbul Biennale, Istanbul, Turkey
2011 All Palaces Are Temporary Palaces, Lyon Docks, Docks Art Fair Program, Lyon, France
2011 Orientale*, curated by Maurizio Bortolotti and Shwetal Patel collateral to the Venice Biennale. Chiesa delle Zitelle, Venice, Italy
2011 Royal Wedding Poem, (gesso panel version) Scope Foundation project with Galerie Analix-Forever, Scope Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2011 Royal Wedding Poems, Billboard series, London, UK
2011 Génération Polluée: Davide Bertocchi, Cyprien Gaillard, Camille Henrot, Marc Horowitz, Robert Montgomery, Douglas White, Galerie Nuke, Paris, France
2010 Trees, Galerie Analix-Forever, Geneva, Switzerland
2010 Heart of Glass, 20 Hoxton Square Projects, London, UK
2010 The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You, Scope Foundation project with Galerie Analix-Forever, Scope Art Basel, Basel, Switzerland
2010 I Won’t Give Up, with Fabio Paleari, Resistance Inc and Guido Costa Projects at Coningsby Gallery, London, UK
2010 Cars & Bikes, Galerie Analix-Forever, Geneva, Switzerland
2010 Don’t Jump- Mary Heilman, Robert Montgomery, Julie Ryan, Lawrence Weiner, Galerie Bigger Better Space, Vienna, Austria
2010 The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You, The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, UK
2009 Emotional Emergency, solo show, Analix Forever Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
2009 Words in the City at Night, Billboard Series. London, UK
2009 Utopia/Distopia, The Grand Palais, Paris, France (Art Paris program)
2009 Learning by Doing: 25 Years of Artist’s in Residence at the MFAH, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
2008 Derniers Jours: May 68/May 08, solo show, Galerie Nuke, Paris, France
2008 I Won’t Give Up, collaboration with Fabio Paleari, Guido Costa Projects, Turin, Italy
2007 Strategic Art Getts, curated by Neil Mulholland. The Embassy, Edinburgh, UK
2007 Dazed & Confused versus Andy Warhol, THE BALTIC, Newcastle-Gateshead, UK
2006 The Circle of Dead Grass Where the Circus Used to Be, Sean Flynn, David Fryer, Robert 2006 Trolley Gallery, London, UK
2006 Words in the City at Night, The Margaret Thatcher Project, New York, NY
2005 God is Bored of Us, Fast Moving Consumer Goods, London, UK
2005 Words in the City at Night, London, UK