| DATE | 3 July 2025 |
| TIME | 7 – 9:30 PM |
| LOCATION | HKAS Main Campus (10/F, Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2 Harbour Road, Wan Chai) |
| SPEAKER | Dr. Pia Johnson |
| FEE | Free |
| To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Hong Kong Art School, HKAS has partnered with RMIT University, Australia, to launch the “Master Talks Series,” offering professional art education for industry professionals and enthusiasts. The series covers diverse topics, featuring a stellar line-up of instructors, including RMIT’s experienced lecturers and artists from Australia, local Hong Kong artists, and Hong Kong Art School lecturers, blending global trends with local insights. The first “Photography” talk, led by artist Dr. Pia Johnson, will take place on July 3, 2025, fostering engaging discussions in an interactive format to encourage exchange, embodying the ideals of international dialogue and artistic practice. Register now to enrich your artistic inspiration! |
Summary
Dr. Pia Johnson will discuss her artistic and photographic practice that stems from concerns of cultural identity and belonging. Presenting a range of different artistic projects, Pia will speak about how her artwork and research engages with broader thematic areas of migration and mobility, and how she utilises self-portraiture, archives and site responsive performance-based methods.The talk will then be followed by students sharing pre-prepared photographic or artistic objects that speak to the theme of ‘home’, with the aim to consider how visual culture and language can be used to construct and consider personal and broader social contexts for artistic practice.
In the final part of the workshop participants will use the earlier discussion and talk as inspiration to experiment with self-portraiture, performance and collaboration to create a new photographic image(s).
Speaker Biography
Dr. Pia Johnson is a visual artist, photographer, curator and lecturer based in Australia. Her practice is engaged in performance, transcultural identity and belonging, stemming from her mixed background of Chinese Italian-Australian descent. Her works have been awarded and exhibited across Australia and internationally 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 performing arts organisations in Australia and is published in major news and magazines globally.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 from University of Melbourne and has a Doctorate in Fine Arts from RMIT University, where she is a Senior Lecturer and the Associate Dean Discipline of Photography in the School of Art.
