Kim Montgomery

neither you nor I are what we hope to become someday
Kim Montgomery
Gallery 1 May 13th – June 10th 2006
Artist’s talk 2pm, Thursday 18 May

Kim Montgomery’s work references popular culture, art history, icons and iconography. She identifies modern day ‘icons’, living and dead, objects or places, and creates for them using canvases sharing the traditional measurements of Christian icons. Her interest focuses on the male figure in popular conscousness and how beauty and self-destruction in idolised young men have traditionally gone hand-in-hand and been celebrated and exploited - particularly in the Twentieth Century with such figures as Sid Vicious. The artist is interested in these glamorously subversive figures and their appeal to in particular the young who often identify with them seeing them as rebels against conformity. Montgomery also recognises objects that have gained a cult following among the young. These products deliberately mix mass production and pseudo-subversion, encouraging a spirituality combined with fashion and economics.
The artist also explores the relationship between the idol and herself, the idoliser and the methods of facilitating this worship. Montgomery recreates in paint such throwaway yet obsessively collected and (for the producers) profit making ephemera as posters, postcards, badges etc. In this she references movements like Pop Art, an art movement that began in Britain and the United States in the 1950s that used the images and techniques of mass media, advertising, and popular culture, to make points about contemporary culture, often in an ironic manner.

Kim Montgomery graduated in Fine Art at the University of Ulster in 2004. Previous exhibitions include group shows, From Ritual to Romance, Catalyst Gallery, Belfast, 2003; Take Away, Context Gallery 2004. This is the artist’s solo show.