Zo Damage © Silvi Glattauer 2022

Bio

About

Zo Damage is a Melbourne-based visual artist, researcher, and live music photographer. Her practice explores embodied aesthetic experiences through traditional and experimental analogue photography and printmaking. Damage’s work has been published and exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at Nanda\Hobbs Contemporary (Sydney), the Ballarat Botanical Gardens Conservatory, and The Market Building (Castlemaine).

She photographed a live music performance every day for a full year, creating a 366-day leap year collection presented in her book, The Damage Report. The project debuted with a major solo exhibition at Arts Centre Melbourne. In recent projects, Damage has collaborated with local musicians, repurposing broken and discarded music equipment as etching tools to produce abstract monoprints.

Research & Recognition

Damage is a PhD candidate in Fine Art at Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA), Monash University. She is a three-time consecutive finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize (2023, 2024, 2025), recipient of the 2023 Bowness Photography People’s Choice Award, and winner of The Age Music Victoria Outstanding Achievement Award (2017) for The Damage Report—marking only the second time the accolade has been presented in the awards' history.

Her artworks and self-published books are held in public and private collections across Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America. Additional honours include the State Library Victoria Fellowship (2022), the RMIT School of Art Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence (2021), and the Queen Victoria Market (QVM) Support to the Community Award (2018). Her studio, established over fifteen years ago, is located at Arts House in North Melbourne.

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