Thoughtful Billboards

This is from the work of the artist and poet Robert Montgomery, he says he works in a  "POETIC AND MELANCHOLIC POST-SITUATIONIST TRADITION"  leaving his art on what would otherwise be an overlooked part of the city. In the everyday world we are assaulted by images. Due to mass media there is no getting away from the image as it determines our reality and how we live and behave. The image becomes more real than reality. There is only surface without depth. As Berger stated, 

" We are now so accustomed to being addressed by these images that we scarcely notice their total impact... we accept the total system of publicity images as we accept an element of climate.. we are theoretically the active agent- we can look away, turn down the sound, make some coffee. Yet despite this, one has the impression that publicity images are continually passing us, like express trains on their way to some distant terminus. We are static; they are dynamic." 

Yet Robert Montgomery, through his use of billboards, bus stops, challenges our perception of the everyday. Taking something that would normally be used for publicity images and instead uses them to challenge and interact with the passerby. The text forcing us to stop, read, interpret. In a way that an image no longer does, as we skim over the many images we are bombarded with on a daily basis. Added to that his choice of words and their direct correlation to an event, (image 2, Oscar Night) challenges us to contemplate his words as we go about our daily lives, waiting for the bus. So every so often, stop, and really look.

view more of his work at http://www.robertmontgomery.org/robertmontgomery.org/ROBERT_MONTGOMERY.html

quote: Ways of Seeing, by John Berger