Inside an abandoned Art Deco swimming pool, Scottish artist Robert Montgomery installed an 11-metre illuminated poem about empathy and kindness, as part of Nuart Aberdeen street art festival.

There was a connection there that stayed with me.

☀️ Much like the sun, street artists place their work into the urban landscape without any expectation of return, operating outside the logic of exchange that governs most cultural production.

The artist intervenes in the city without knowing who will encounter the work, how long it will last, or what kind of response it will generate, if any at all.

What happens next is entirely out of their control: some people will engage, others will not, but the work does not wait for a response to justify its existence.

Even after all this time, the principle remains unchanged: the work is an offering, complete in itself and detached from the idea that anything is owed in return.

What matters is not the reaction it generates or the visibility it might receive online, but the fact that it has been placed there, available to anyone and owned by no one.