ZOË BARRY is a composer, cellist, sound artist, performance maker and educator. She creates across site specific installation, galleries, film, immersive theatre, digital space and chamber music. She is drawn to creating ways to gather, ways to connect, and intuitive meaning-making. Her practice is devised, collaborative, relational and aesthetic. Her work explores liminal spaces, disturbance, atmospherics, intuition, slowness, and amplification of quiet voices.
Zoë completed a B Mus in Ethnomusicology and cello performance at the University Of Adelaide, and spent her twenties performing baroque and experimental repertoire, and playing in bands. Drawn to composing for theatre, her practice developed into devised, collaborative performance making, as a performer, director and composer. She cofounded theatre company Ladykillers, and developed longstanding collaborative relationships with theatre companies including Patch Theatre, Restless Dance Theatre, Sandpit, Brink and Drop Bear Theatre. Upon relocating to Melbourne Zoë became a Teaching Artist with The Song Room and Arts Centre Melbourne, and her creative practice and teaching practice continued to develop and inform one another.
Zoë is fascinated with creating immersive theatrical experiences in non traditional spaces, including the digital space. Recent works include Mountain Goat Mountain, a work for families to experience together at home, by Threshold, (Arts Centre Melbourne, DreamBIG, HOTA, Awesome Arts), A Highly Filtered Picture of Dorian Gray and Ghosts, Toast… by Sandpit and Google Creative Lab (online festival), The Story of Lamp (Arts Centre Melbourne), and The Lighthouse by Patch Theatre (Australia Council’s Major Festivals Initiative, 2020 Adelaide Festival.)
Zoë has scored theatre works for Back To Back Theatre’s Theatre Of Speed, Sandpit, Google Creative, Playbox Theatre, State Theatre Of South Australia, Patch Theatre, Rawcus, Restless Dance Theatre, Vitalstatistix and Drop Bear Theatre. Her scores have been heard around the world, from the Sydney Opera House to the John F Kennedy Center for The Performing Arts.
Zoë has co-created theatre works including Ladykillers’ Lullaby, Cake, The Pyjama Girl and Based On A True Story, Restless Dance Theatre’s Howling Like A Wolf, and Patch Theatre Company’s Emily Loves To Bounce.
Zoë has developed a relational theatre practice with visual arts collective The Seam and Drop Bear Theatre, and their theatre works for families have toured Australia, the US and Asia - Rain: For Babies And Their Carers by DropBear Theatre, Edwina Cordingley and The SEAM, (Lincoln Centre, Hong Kong & Macau, festivals around Australia), The Boy Who Loved Tiny Things, (ArtPlay, DreamBIG Festival, Royal Botanic Gardens of Victoria), & Mountains Of Kindness.
Zoë’s gallery practice focuses on recorded text, sound design and musical scoring, often with a live performative aspect. Recent commissions include Centre For Contemporary Photography’s Sensory Soundings: Hypnotic Orations, responding to Hi-Vis Dreams by Warren Baker, Bendigo Gallery’s Gothic Beauty, Stockroom Gallery’s Feast the Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial, collaborating with visual artist Georgie Mattingley, and Camouflage Disco for the Melbourne Museum's Pauline Gandel Children's Gallery.
Zoë’s ‘amplifying voices’ works for microphones and looping stations include Mountains Rise, a 4 hour live vocal looping installation created with Back To Back Theatre’s Theatre of Speed for Geelong After Dark, What I Want To Say Is for Geelong’s Poppykettle Festival, and My Turn as part of Back To Back Theatre’s CAMP 2019.
As a cellist, Zoë has performed with Jon Cale, Meow Meow, Missy Higgins, Stars Of The Lid, A Winged Victory For The Sullen, Mick Harvey, Laura Jean, Dr G Yunupingul, Richard J Frankland, Accademia Arcadia, Musica da Camera, Ross Daly’s Labyrinth, Ross McLennan's New World Symphony, Tex Perkins, and Jocelyn Pook. She has recorded with Sia, Augie March, Thelma Plum and the Australian Art orchestra. She is the solo cellist in Christian Wagstaff and Keith Courtney’s House Of Mirrors (Dark Mofo, Adelaide, Sydney & Melbourne Festivals), and solo cellist in The New Pollutants’ rescore of Metropolis (MONA FOMA, Opera House). Performance highlights include the Lincoln Center, the John F Kennedy Centre for The Performing Arts, Dark Mofo and MONA FOMA, Edinburgh International Festival, tours through Asia, Greece and Russia, the Sydney, Perth, Melbourne & Adelaide Festivals, Auckland Festival, Next Wave, Supersense Festival, Revelations Festival, Metropolis New Music Festival, and Melbourne Recital Centre series.
Zoë is a member of The Letter String Quartet, presenting programs of new works for strings and voices, commissioning composers to push the sonic possibilities of the string quartet. The quartet has appeared at FOLA, Next Wave, Melbourne Recital Centre, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Metropolis New Music Festival, toured nationally, and have collaborated with musicians including Mick Harvey, Jen Cloher, Jida Gulpilil, Evelyn Ida Morris, Yana Alana, Richard J Frankland, Andrea Kellor, Bree Van Reyk, Wally Gunn, Erik deLuca and Ned Collette. Their debut album, All The Stories, was released in 2020.
Zoë’s film composition credits include feature films Animals (Sundance 2019), The Infinite Man (SXSW) and Kitty Green’s Ukraine Is Not A Brothel (Venice Film Festival, Winner, ACCTA Best Documentary), co-composed with Jed Palmer.
Zoë is Director of Harmony In Strings, an innovative strings program that sits within Sacred Heart Primary in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Now in its eleventh year, the program provides all students in Years 3 - 6 free, twice weekly small group lessons in cello and violin. The program is dedicated to the students’ developing a relationship with their instruments, and through that a love and understanding of music. It is focussed on meaningful, joyous group music making, and incorporating improvisation and composition., with a trauma informed pedagogy. Zoë teaches cello at Candlebark and Alice Miller, and was Lead Teaching Artist, Pedagogy and Practice, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s The Pizzicato Effect. Zoë co created the Tree And The Key series of phonic books, cds and teaching resources through The Song Room and VICSEG, and has created many educational resources in music and creativity for ArtsLive. Zoë is a member of RMIT’s CRiMP LAB, delivers professional development to teachers and artists, and is currently a member of Ebony Janice Moore and Thea Monyeé’s international project The Free Joy Experience, focussed on spiritual justice and racial healing.
Zoë lives by the Campaspe River in Kyneton, on the land of the Dja Dja Wurrung, Taungurung and Wurundjeri Peoples, the Traditional Owners and custodians of the land. She pays her respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
e: zcbarry at gmail dot com
images by Keith Wagstaff ACS & Sina Dehghani