Heather Burness is an Australian artist working in unconventional print-based processes, drawing and web-based photography. Her work has focused on ephemeral phenomena and the experience of ‘place’, engaging with selected sites (in Australia and overseas) through in-field installations of mild steel plates within the environment. The plates capture the marks of transient micro events such as the flow of water, mist, low-lying clouds, fog, shorelines, groundwater, rivers, soils, atmospheric conditions, and the meeting of fresh and saltwater. These later become printing surfaces for works-on-paper in her studio. She is influenced and guided by Indigenous knowledges and histories, western scientific thinking and the aesthetic concerns of abstraction.

Burness completed a Master of Philosophy (Visual Arts) and taught at the ANU School of Art for 15 years, and occasionally, at the National Art School in Sydney. She has exhibited nationally and in group exhibitions internationally since 1989. Burness has also editioned works for significant artists under the name of Grey Lady Press. She has works in the collections of Australian regional galleries, including SECCA, the State Library of New South Wales, the National Library of Australia and the National Gallery of Australia.