JD Malat Gallery is proud to cultivate Montgomery’s comprehensive exhibition history, having had numerous solo exhibitions across the world, most recently at the Aspen Art Museum in January 2019. Not to mention, Montgomery has presented many important exhibitions in the United Kingdom, such as being shortlisted for the UK Holocaust Memorial, showcased at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Montgomery has also had a strong Biennale presence worldwide, representing Britain at Kochi Biennale in 2012 and the Yinchuan Biennale in 2016.
Whilst many artists become synonymous with one artistic medium, Robert is rather 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 sits somewhere in-between a 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.
JD Malat Gallery will exhibit a selection of Montgomery’s newly made lightworks, which echo his important installations of the past at the old Tempelhof Airport in Berlin, the Kochi Biennale in 2012 and his installation of "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, with its image having been shared more than 24 million times online.
Shiny Colourful Amusements for the Walls of the Bourgeoisie by Robert Montgomery
Tuesday 1st October - Saturday 2nd November 2019
JD Malat Gallery, 30 Davies Street, W1K 4NB