[7] Ace was first introduced to techniques that he would later employ in his artistic practice at the age of seven or eight when he helped his great-aunt Annie Owl-McGregor to make Anishinaabe splint-ash baskets.
[5] Ace is participating in the Nigig Visiting Artist Residency put on by the Indigenous Visual Culture Program at OCAD University in the winter of 2018.
[3][10] Much of Barry Ace's work uses found materials like capacitors, resistors, and light-emitting diodes, and traditional Great Lakes-style floral beadwork to comment on "cultural endurance undeterred by centuries of colonial oppression and rapid social change.
[6][13] By referencing the history of Anishinaabe textile art in works that use contemporary mass-produced materials, among other themes Ace investigates the dialogue between Indigenous and European cultures, much like fellow artists Rosalie Favell and Jeff Thomas do.
[17] Barry Ace was featured in Emergence from the Shadows: First Peoples Photographic Perspectives (1996) held at the Canadian Museum of History and curated by Jeff Thomas.
[31] Ace won the Ontario Association of Art Galleries' Curatorial Writing Award in 2012 for his essay "A Reparative Act," which was written for Robert Houle's Paris/Ojibwa exhibition catalogue.
[8] He also won the Deputy Minister's Outstanding Achievement Award with his team in 1999 for the artist-in-residence and exhibition program that they launched at Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada.
[32] Barry Ace also co-founded the OO7 (Ottawa Ontario Seven) Collective, a group of Indigenous artists that includes Ariel Smith, Rosalie Favell, Frank Shebageget, Leo Yerxa, Michael Belmore, Ron Noganosh, and invited "special agents.