On Wednesday 22 April, Robert Montgomery unveiled an eleven-metre illuminated text installation above the empty thirty-six-metre pool at Bon Accord Baths in Aberdeen.
The work, made with Nuart curator Martyn Reed, opened Nuart Aberdeen 2026 under the theme Poetry Is in the Streets.
Reed has called the piece “a clarion call for love and empathy towards those less fortunate than ourselves”.
The work takes its title from its first line: Even After All This Time the Sun Never Says to the Earth “You Owe Me”.
The line is widely attributed online to the 14th-century Persian poet Hafez.
The English text comes from Daniel Ladinsky’s 1999 collection The Gift, which Ladinsky has described as renderings inspired by Hafez rather than translations of any specific ghazal in the Diwan-e-Hafez.
Persian-literature scholars have publicly disputed Ladinsky’s Hafez attributions for over two decades.
Bon Accord Baths opened on 30 August 1940.
Lord Provost Sir Thomas Mitchell performed the opening, the build cost £37,000, and the building was called the Uptown Baths until 1955.
The foundation stone was laid in 1936 by Councillor Hay; a 1939 opening was planned but did not happen because of the war. It joined the Regent Cinema (1932) and Capitol Cinema (1933) as a trio of Aberdeen Art Deco buildings.
It is Category B listed and, according to Bon Accord Heritage, one of the last surviving Art Deco pools in the country, with original sycamore panelling and a vaulted concrete roof.
The Baths closed in 2008 after Aberdeen City Council made budget cuts to leisure provision.
The Save Bon Accord Baths campaign began in 2014, and in 2015 a group of local people formed Bon Accord Heritage SCIO.
The charity is volunteer-led with no paid staff.
The Architectural Heritage Fund awarded a Project Viability Grant in 2021.
Aberdeen City Council granted Bon Accord Heritage a Licence to Occupy in 2020 and passed a motion of formal support for restoration in 2022.
The charity is working towards RIBA Stage 1.
Bruce Strachan, chair of Bon Accord Heritage, said the charity was “delighted to be supporting Aberdeen Inspired and Nuart Aberdeen 2026 by providing Bon Accord Baths as a unique backdrop”.
Montgomery was born in Scotland and is based in London.
He represented the UK at the 2012 Kochi Biennale and the 2016 Yinchuan Biennale, and his work is held by the Albright-Knox and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
He was one of the artists at the first Nuart Aberdeen in 2017, with a text piece on Jopps Lane.
Montgomery has a second 2026 work in the city, a mural at Alford Place visible from Thistle Street.
The Bon Accord Baths installation is open Thursday 23 April to Sunday 26 April, midday to 6pm, free.
Top photograph: Brian Tallman
Bottom photograph: Conor Gault
