ROBERT MONTGOMERY: NOW REPRESENTED BY HALCYON
Halcyon is proud to introduce renowned artist and poet Robert Montgomery to the gallery programme.
Montgomery is a leading conceptual artist, known around the world for his light work installations which offset the artist’s lyrical poetry against twilit landscapes.
Robert Montgomery (b. 1972) is a London-based artist, born in Scotland, who emerged into public consciousness in the 2010s when he began posting his poetry over billboards and bus stops in East London.
This endeavour earned him the nickname ‘The Banksy of Poetry’. Today, his work is exhibited worldwide and by major institutions. This includes the Albright Knox Museum (New York) which in 2021 acquired a monumental light sculpture and the Musée du Louvre (Paris) which featured Montgomery’s work in La Suite de l’Histoire, the museum's first exhibition of contemporary art.
Having established himself as one of the world's leading conceptual artists, Montgomery’s decision to sign with Halcyon Gallery marks a new chapter in his accomplished career. Exhibited in the gallery’s flagship location 148 New Bond Street is a new series of landscape paintings overlaid with poetry, marking a new direction for the artist. They hang in dialogue with Bob Dylan’s American landscapes, showing how two very different artists express journeys from unique perspectives.
Robert Montgomery, M20 Painting (Black Survived Angels)
Montgomery’s work is often a meditation on the contemporary world and ecology. He believes we are ‘almost in a state of collective trauma caused by the rapidity with which digital media has taken over our lives.’ He says,‘I see a contemporary world where our consciousness has been increasingly invaded by digital media which is designed to both sell us things, and to create conflict between us. I think our psychological struggle now is to free ourselves from that digital realm and put ourselves back into the natural world, back into real space and time, to urgently re-establish our kinship with nature – our connection to trees and sky – and to re-establish our kinship with each other.’
This sentiment is expressed clearly in works such as When We Are Gone/ The Trees Will Riot and the recently created M20 Paintings, which melancholically reveal views of intangible landscapes seen through car windows.
Robert Montgomery, When We Are Gone The Trees Will Riot, exhibition Songs of the Open Road Halcyon
Robert Montgomery on signing with Halcyon:‘I am enormously excited to sign with Halcyon. The standard of the curatorial work at the gallery is world class. Their recent Warhol exhibition was museum quality, brilliantly researched and put together, and educated me on a period of Warhol’s work that I wasn’t deeply familiar with.
Work by Robert Montgomery and Songs of the Open Road is on view at Halcyon Gallery’s flagship at 148 New Bond Street until September 1