
Zoe Veness is a designer working at the intersection of art and design. She is currently the Deputy Head of School (Design) at the School of Art & Design in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture.
She studied classical ballet at the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne followed by design at UNSW Art & Design attaining a PhD (2015) in the field of contemporary jewellery. Her research is informed by theories from craft, jewellery, psychoanalysis and anthropology. She is particularly interested in explorations of movement within making practices and in relation to notions of place.
Veness has staged numerous solo exhibitions and curatorial projects in art, craft and design and has participated in over 70 national and international group exhibitions. Recent projects include new work developed for the Australian Design Centre’s national touring exhibition Made/Worn: Contemporary Australian Jewellery (2020-2022) and for solo exhibitions, The Stream of Time (2022) at Woollahra Gallery in Sydney and New Terrain in an Old World (2017) at Craft ACT: Craft + Design Centre in Canberra. She has also co-curated exhibitions including Wayfaring at Studio XL-XS in Melbourne (2019) followed by a second iteration of the exhibition at Craft ACT in Canberra (2020); and Remanence which was exhibited at Domain House in Hobart for the festival, Ten Days on the Island (2017) in Tasmania. Project outcomes can be viewed at zoeveness.com
She has been artist-in-residence at Arthur Boyd's Bundanon in NSW, Australia (2010) and at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland (2006). Her work has been acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia, Griffith Regional Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia.
She supervises research students in the areas of contemporary craft and jewellery practice, jewellery history, object design and textiles design.
Previous to UNSW, she worked as Studio Coordinator of Object and 3D Design at the School of Creative Arts and Media, University of Tasmania in Hobart.