Pia Johnson
An Uncertain Grasp

In Pia Johnson’s new series of lens-based artworks she continues to explore the house as a space of identity, belonging and shelter within the Australian bush landscape. An Uncertain Grasp forms part of the artist’s ongoing considerations of migration, transcultural identities and feminist narratives in contemporary Australia.

Situating herself within the context of female writers and artists that have explored the domestic realm of the house, this site-responsive series looks at one of the earliest homesteads built in Macedon, and the surrounding bush landscape of the Macedon Ranges. Johnson uses a phenomenological approach of ‘reading rooms’; where she places herself within the space to embody and render visible women’s stories across history. Her intimate artworks speak to the everyday and personal as much as the universal nuances of the human experience.

Pia Johnson is a photographer and visual artist, whose practice emerged out of a concern with issues of cultural identity and difference, stemming from her mixed background of Chinese and Italian-Australian descent. Exhibited across Australia and internationally, 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, Pia has commissions from all the major and small to medium performing arts organisations in Australia. Pia holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts from University of Melbourne and has a Doctorate in Fine Arts from RMIT University.

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