The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You

The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You
Robert Montgomery

2 May to 6 September 2026

Robert Montgomery is a Scottish-born, London-based contemporary artist and poet.

He is renowned for his large-scale light works using words and poetry installed in public spaces. As well as his evocative light poems, which use environmentally friendly LED lights, he is well known for his billboard poems, fire poems, woodcuts, paintings and watercolours.

To coincide with the Artists, Lovers, Outsiders exhibition, we are presenting Montgomery’s light poem The People You Love Become Ghosts Inside of You, 2013.

Like Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, Robert Montgomery grew up in Ayrshire and later trained at the Glasgow School of Art:

“Their story is incredible – they were working-class boys from Ayrshire who had to go to London to become themselves and these amazing avant-garde painters. They were real trailblazers”.

Montgomery has also made a new painting for the exhibition, responding to Damian Barr’s novel The Two Roberts (2025).