Black & White Gallery Text
Investigations into overlooked realms of daily life, continues to be at the heart of Montague's art practice. In his highly acclaimed The Stray Shopping Cart Identification System project exhibited in the fall of 2006 at Black & White Gallery, Montague's method was to build a system of classification around a mundane object. In To Know the Spiders, Montague mounts a visual exploration of seemingly mundane animals – the spiders that occupy the peripheries of human architectural space. His process begins with the collection and killing of a spider. He then studies its face under a microscope and from the resulting drawings creates a portrait of the spider in the form of a fabric banner. The banner is then placed and photographed in the exact spot of collection. The banner illuminates the presence of a silent witness and sometime symbiotic partner while also serving as a memorial to the spider that had to die for that understanding to be gained.