TM Gallery, in collaboration with MTArt Agency, proudly announce a new exhibition by artist and poet Robert Montgomery. The exhibition will unveil never-before-seen works that blend the realms of art and poetry, reflecting Montgomery’s signature vision where language is transmuted into tangible expressions.
“Everything I do is an investigation of where art and poetry might meet, and how to make poetry physical, how to make it concrete,” says Robert Montgomery. “So I’m trying to make paintings that are poems, light works that are poems, billboards that are poems. I’m always trying to hit the magic point where something is an art object and a poem at the same time, where there is no separation between those two things.”
This exhibition will highlight the modern tradition of ‘Concrete Poetry,’ a movement pioneered by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in the early 1910s. Montgomery sees his work as a natural extension of this tradition, intertwining poem-paintings and light poems.
Montgomery’s deep-rooted connection to poetry stems from his belief that poetry is a religion—a sanctuary providing solace and healing. In today’s world, dominated by materialistic language in news media and advertising, poetry stands as a refuge for the soul. Poetry, with its ability to reconcile the material and the immaterial, offers a way to rediscover the magic hidden within the ordinary.
The exhibition will also coincide with the release of Montgomery’s new book, titled after a line from Apollinaire’s poem Zone: “THE BILLBOARDS ARE ALL WE ARE LEFT WITH POETRY THIS MORNING AND THE SIGNS ON THE WALLS SHRIEK LIKE PARROTS”. Inspiring Montgomery during his art college days, this poem planted the initial seed of putting poetry on billboards. As part of this artistic venture, new billboard poems will be scattered around London, inviting viewers to contemplate a city adorned with poetic neon signs. “What if you wandered through a city and all the neon signs had been changed to poetry? What if every morning people wrote their dreams from the night before on their bedsheets and hung them outside their window as laundry?” Montgomery muses, inviting us to ponder how such transformations could influence our collective consciousness and redefine our understanding of love, peace, happiness, and kindness.
Robert Montgomery
11th October, 2023 - 17th October, 2023
TM Gallery, 7 Cubitt Street, London, WC1X 0HF.
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