Pia Johnson

Pia Johnson is a Senior Lecturer within the School of Art. She is currently the Associate Dean, Photography.

Pia Johnson is a photographer and visual artist, whose work is engaged with performance and performativity. Her practice emerged out of a concern with issues of cultural identity and difference, stemming from her mixed Chinese and Italian Australian heritage. She is interested in reading and performing Eurasian ethnicities, intersections with gender, and the practice of photographing live performance.

Pia's work has been exhibited widely in Australia and internationally including the National Gallery of Victoria, Wollongong Art Gallery, Ballarat Art Gallery, Queensland Centre of Photography, Photography Centre of Perth, Gold Coast City Gallery, Pingyao International Photography Festival (China), The Museum of the City of Cuernavaca (Mexico), PhotoAccess, Stockroom Kyneton, Edward Pearce Gallery, Project Basho Gallery (USA), Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Castlemaine Festival, Bundoora Homestead, Blindside, Mailbox Art Space and Manningham Art Gallery amongst others.

Pia has been a finalist in many photography awards, including the National Photographic Portrait Prize, Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize, Bowness Photography Prize, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award, PCP's Iris Award, Maggie Diaz Photography Prize for Women, Martin Kantor Photographic Portrait Prize, Galah Regional Photography Prize (Honourable Mention), and Darebin Art Prize. She has held artist residencies at the National University of Singapore, Studio Kura in Japan, Bogong Centre for Sound Culture, Mooramong National Heritage Homestead and her work is collected in private and public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria, Bendigo Art Gallery, City of Yarra, Museums Victoria, European Centre for Culture Italy and others. In 2022 Pia is the State Library of Victoria Kerri Hall Fellowship for Performing Arts inaugural recipient. In 2023 Pia was the Artist in Residence at the Immigration Museum, and present her solo exhibition Re-Orient in 2024. Pia won the Early Career Research RMIT Research Award for Impact and Engagement in 2024.

Working across collaborative and generative cross-disciplinary projects, she has had commissions from 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, Punctum Inc and AsiaTOPA, the Australian National Academy of Music, Rawcus and Fraught Outfit; and she is regularly invited as a guest speaker and artistic advisor for a range of organisations. Pia is well known for her commercial practice in portrait and performance photography, working with major to small-medium and independent arts organisations and creatives in Australia. Her photographs have been published in Rolling Stone, The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Age Life and Style, Good Weekend, The Herald Sun, The Monthly,The Saturday Paper, Artist Profile, Art Collector among others as well as independent and cultural papers and publishing companies such as Currency Press and Black Inc.

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 Senior lecturer. Pia was selected to be part of the government funded Women of Colour Executive Leadership Program in 2024.

In 2023 Pia started 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 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.

Personal website: www.piajohnson.com

@piajohnsonphotography