Echoes of Voices in the High Towers, Berlin
With the curators at Neue Berliner Raume Robert Montgomery’s work took over the site of the abandoned US Army air base at Tempelhof in Berlin in 2012. He created two large light works about peace and healing at the former military air base, and 23 billboard poems across Berlin that summer as well as further installations at Staadbad in Wedding.
This project gathered huge critical acclaim,
“Montgomery speaks about cities as being like living museums, alive with memory. Inspired by a speech by Victor Hugo, Montgomery’s poems form the voice of an unspoken figure – the voice of the city as a living museum. Whilst the voice is knowing, it is not powerful, repeatedly using the word “please”, pleading for a peaceful future.”
— Maude Magazin, Catherine Ailsa Jones
“Montgomery’s works serve as a microcosm of larger social phenomena, as he traces personal memories and sentiments through his writing in an effort to speak to the deep melancholia of our modern age. He has chosen the billboard as his canvas in order to create a potential dialogue with the viewer in a setting that is conventionally imposing and monological.”
— Berlin Art Link, Alison Hugill