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12 October / 17 November 2024
PIA JOHNSON
An Uncertain Grasp
Dr Pia Johnson is a visual artist, photographer and lecturer. Her practice-led research is engaged in
performance, cultural identity and belonging, stemming from her mixed background of Chinese Italian- Australian descent. These themes have underpinned her interest in memory, cultural spaces and performance, to investigate notions of transcultural identity, belonging and otherness through photography. Pia has exhibited across Australia and internationally, and her works have been in numerous prizes and are collected in private and public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria.
Known as one of Australia’s distinctive performance photography and portrait artists for over a decade, Pia has commissions from all the major and small to medium performing arts organisations in Australia. In 2023 Pia was awarded the Kerri Hall Fellowship for Performing Arts at the State Library of Victoria and was an Artist in Residence at the Immigration Museum Victoria, which culminated in the solo exhibition Re-Orient. Pia has her own podcast Out of the Frame: Conversations about Photography, which profiles contemporary photographers and artists speaking about their practice and photographic concerns today.
Pia holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts and Diploma of Modern Languages (Mandarin) from University of Melbourne and has a Doctorate in Fine Arts from RMIT University, where she is a lecturer and currently the Program Manager of the Master of Photography program.
Pia lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, with her husband and daughter. She acknowledges and
pays respect to the traditional owners of the land - always will be Aboriginal land.