Zoë Veness is a designer-maker and researcher working in the field of contemporary jewellery and object design. She initially studied dance at the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne prior to completing undergraduate and postgraduate design degrees at UNSW Art & Design including a practice-based PhD in 2014. Her PhD research explored oscillations in her studio practice between jewellery and sculpture through a psychoanalytical framing of Donald Winnicott's transitional object. She is also interested in systems of material and cultural value as well as methods of place-based making.

She has had ten solo exhibitions including New Terrain in an Old World (2017) at Craft ACT in Canberra; To make an end is to make a beginning (2014) AD Space, UNSW Art & Design; The Infinite Fold (2009) at Jam Factory Contemporary Craft and Design in Adelaide; Transformations (2008) at Masterworks Gallery in Auckland; and Mathematical Beauty (2007) at the Australian Design Centre in Sydney. 

Her work has been selected for exhibitions in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Singapore, London, Scotland, Germany, and the USA, and is held is private and public collections including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of South Australia. In 2011 Zoë was awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award for PhD research, and Australia Council Visual Arts Grants for the development of new work in 2002, 2006 and 2017. She has undertaken artist residencies at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland in 2006, and at Bundanon in NSW Australia in 2010.

Zoë is a design lecturer at UNSW Art & Design currently developing Object Design courses for the new UNSW Bachelor of Design degree to be launched in 2019. Previously she was Studio Coordinator of 3D Design at the School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania in Hobart.