Montgomery is a British contemporary artist well known for his work in public space. He makes lightworks, billboard poems, paintings, fire poems, woodcuts, and watercolours. His work brings text art closer to the language of poetry. He represented the UK in the 2012 Kochi Biennale and the 2016 Yinchuan Biennale. His work is in museum collections across the world including the Albright Knox Museum in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He has had solo museum projects at the Aspen Art Museum in Colorado, Oklahoma Contemporary in Oklahoma City, and the Cer Modern Museum in Ankara. His work was recently included in the Musée du Louvre exhibition “La Suite de l’Histoire” in Paris, the Louvre’s first exhibition of contemporary sculpture. His work is hugely popular on the internet, the piece “The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You” has been shared online more than 200 million times.
Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine says about Montgomery:
“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. Montgomery’s focus lies in broadcasting his message to a wider audience. His preferred installation format is co-opted billboards: his own text, replacing the billboards’, subverts their intended purpose of disseminating ads. Montgomery’s art has graced the cityscapes of Paris, Berlin, and London, where he is based. His first solo exhibition in New York opened last week at C24 Gallery, comprising the largest collection of his works gathered together to date. 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...”
(Rachel Small, Interview Magazine.)