An installation by artist Ben Hartley, that contrasts feelings of nostalgia with geological time. Born out of a desire to return to something that doesn’t, or may never have existed. The title references both the nostalgia for the yellow light produced by car headlights and streetlights before their replacement with cold white LEDs; and the yellow light through which ancient organic matter preserved within fossilised tree resin is seen and remembered. In an apparent rejection of this modernity, the headlamps now become makeshift lightboxes, once again emitting a yellow glow, the matter enshrined within the amber-like material, illuminated in stasis for perpetuity.

Ben Hartley is a Bristol-based artist originally from Somerset, primarily working in sculpture and installation. Their process stems from encounters with material, and utilises fictioning to create sculptural interventions that exist both in and outside of our reality that engage with archaeology, science fiction and ritual.

Instagram

Venue: Gallery 333, Exeter Phoenix

An intimate window gallery for micro-installations and sculptural interventions.