The poems he composes suggest a steady faith that humanity can heal the ecological and emotional trauma of our times, with a lyricism that recalls poets like Philip Larkin and Sylvia Plath.
Light poems are another major part of his work. Similar in size to billboards, they are instead made of environmentally friendly LED solar-powered lights that brighten and dim with changing weather. Softer and more quiet are his watercolors and woodcut monochrome canvases. His first solo exhibition in New York opened last week at C24 Gallery, comprising the largest collection of his works gathered together to date.
Born in Scotland in , Montgomery was raised as a Christian. His early spirituality, he shares, still motivates him to create poems as a means of divine solace. All Palaces are Temporary Palaces was featured at the Venice Biennale, and his work was also featured at the first Indian Biennale in We visited Montgomery at C24 gallery while he was installing, starting the interview with a tour.
Walking in the entrance with blaring words of lights ahead and on either side felt like entering a cathedral. The location is called Tempelhof Airport, and it has this intense history. This is the original airport. When the Red Army took Berlin at the end of the war, there was still a hardcore S. So they flooded the basement and locked it with the German soldiers inside. It then became a U. Air Force base in the s in the Cold War. The structures that I worked on are the baseball scoreboards, so it has the scoreboard on the back.
It was actually my first billboard piece. It somehow invades our subconscious mind and it gets into our dreams. What I set out to do kind of was to make work in a post-conceptual tradition—text-art that comes from people like Jenny Holzer and Lawrence Wiener—but then just try to make the tone one step closer to poetry.
