Prue Hazelgrove is an artist based on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country specialising in the 19th Century wet plate photographic process known as collodion. The collodion process, an early photographic process, fixes images to glass and metal. By design, the metal photographs, types, are mirror images. Hazelgrove uses this medium to represent stories erased from conventional narratives, asking viewers to consider their biases and beliefs.

Hazelgrove’s practice to date has focused on collodion tintype portraiture, particularly of people within their Queer community, producing works that are tender and celebratory. In Re:Generation, portraiture and landscape intersect, with the body present, absent, or implied within expansive views of nature, forming a direct and attentive relationship with the environment.

Through walking, camping, and extended time in the landscape, Hazelgrove has developed an embodied relationship with Country through close observation and presence. This way of working is intertwined with research into their family history, revealing that their ancestors lived and worked near many of the same places they now dwell, including Tallaganda, the Wari/Shoalhaven River, Braidwood, and Araluen. Hazelgrove’s father was born in Goulburn, and their family lineage in the region stretches back to the early 19th century. Through this reconnection with their heritage, it became clear that the artist was unknowingly retracing paths already taken by those who came before.

Using the wet plate collodion process, Hazelgrove witnesses Country in the present while acknowledging photography’s historical role in colonisation and commodification of the land. Re:Generation is a reply to what has come before, an unfolding and ongoing process that is vulnerable, imperfect, and deeply necessary.