Robert Montgomery

The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You. recycled sunlight poem, installed at the De La Warr Pavilion, 2010

about his poetic / political art

 

I started making billboards in Edinburgh and Glasgow back in 1994, when I was a student. Guy Debord inspired a language for which ideology and poetry were inseparable. Some of my billboards are anti-Capitalist and overtly political, such as THE SPECTACLE OF ADVERTISING. Some are Romantic and personal, like MEMORIES OF MEDITERRANEAN FLOWERS IN THE STREETS OF NEW YORK. But they all have a pathos and melancholy in their underlying tones. I want to bring pathos and melancholy to the street, on billboards normally used to sell Tommy Hilfiger Jeans and Nespresso coffeemakers in a tone of voice at once upbeat and vacuous.

Oscar night Poem. 48 sheet billboard, Old Street,…