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Not ceasing tceo loiter, first self defence performance ,  Adelaide Magisterat Court. See Tim Burns at the Stake article in Time Out magazine. Lucas Ilhien, artist profile June 2004
CARnage! poster, 1978. Franklin Furnace

A Possibility of a Private/Public Space, National Gallery of Victoria, 1975
Westen Australian Newspaper, 1974. Mullaloo Beach explosion article, by Rod Obrien.
“Tim Burns is a legendary figure in the history of Australian underground art. He rose to notoriety in the early 1970s with a series of (literally) explosive art actions, before decamping to New York, where he remained, on and off until the mid-1990s. He now resides on a large property near the town of York, in Western Australia. Rather than identifying as a painter, filmmaker, karaoke videographer, installation artist, theatre director or performer (although he has done all these and more), Burns calls himself “a context artist”. What unites the hugely varied set of projects Burns has worked on over the last forty years is a constant desire to set up situations which criztically reflect on our hypermediated, industrialised western society. His intervenTtions are usually created live, in the public sphere, rather than being quietly crafted in the privacy of a studio setting. More often than not, they result in some sort of dramatic surprise or shift in the participants' attention.”
Lucas Ihlein April 2011 for Artists Profile Magazine, Sydney

His performance installations in the 70's including 'A change of plan' [‘Recent Australian Art’ AGNSW], 'Minefield' [Mildura Sculpture Triennial], ' For The Sake Of Art' [ Ewing Gallery], 'Not Ceasing to Loiter' 
[Adelaide Magistrates court] and the book 'A Pedestrian Series of Postcards [NYC/ Mildura ] became historically seminal works in Australian art.

He was a pioneer in the super-8 No Wave in New York, producing 2 features, Why Cars, Carnage (l977) and Political Transmission (l978. 2 AWARDS The Warhol/ Rauschenberg foundation award 1976 NYC USA A Pedestrian Series of Postcards [NYC] Printed Matter 1977, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Artists Book Award 1977 USA Why- CARS?- CARnage the New York State Council C. A. P. Film Award. 

1978 NYC USA Selected for the International Situationist Show at the Beaubourg Museum Pompidou Centre in Paris and the ICA in London and Boston curated by Peter Wollen Against the Grain (l980), director, co-produced with the Australian Film Commission and the Sydney Biennale, was shown in major International Film Festivals in Edinburgh, Berlin, Montreal, Viaodalid, Paris, Tokyo, Perth, Melbourne and Sydney as well as releases in Australia the US, UK and has been translated into Spanish and Japanese and his work has been aired on SBS, PBS, Time Warner in the USA, ZDF in Germany, and Channel Four in Great Britain.

My Father Belonged to the FBI but I was a Soviet SPY, THE KITCHEN NYC USA 1984 Humanities award, also staged with Araluen ARTS CENTRE Alice Springs, (Pine Gap) 1986 ART Matters award for ‘push it’ NYC USA 1991 Lukes Party (co-producer/co-director with Roz Sultan, 1991) a 16 min film about the stolen generation which won the Irwin Rado Award for Best Australian Short Film Melbourne International Film Festival.
Jury award Cinema du Reel Paris, The San Francisco Film Festival, Golden Gate Jury Award for Short Fiction, The Frames short fiction “Innovation” Award, Adelaide and is currently included in the Australian Centre for Moving Image's Screen Lounge in Federation Square Melbourne. As exec producer art Official, 1998 National award winner of info/doco series for Community TV in Australia with students from ECU WA.

He was awarded the Australia Council fellowship in 1996 and the West Australian Arts Fellowship in 1999 and a PICA award for Sight Unseen in 2007 Artspace book fair Sydney sept 15 exploding utopia published by bookmachine and awarded studio resident prize 2016 to layout ‘I Was Framed’.

His production company Third Degree Burns Unit recent video/performance works in Western Australia include Autogeddon - The Ride for Artrage 1999, White Cells for The Perth International Fringe Festival 2000, Tunnelvision for Artrage 2000 and THIS IS I.T.? a CTV, Access 31 and Perth Fringe Festival co- production 2001. These productions combined elements of theme parks, theatre, film and television to attack aspects of transport, prisons, surveillance and community TV. Executive Producer awarded the ‘infotainment’ award’ by the community broadcasting association of Australia His television credits include producer/director for The Operators, a 13 part interactive sitcom for cable TV through Time /Warner in New York, producer/director for Playboy TV enterprises in New York, in 1999 and This is I.T. a live interactive show for the fringe of the Festival of Perth 2001. 

He has also produced, directed, shot, edited or production managed a number of Music Videos in New York for Australian bands such as Crowded House, Midnight Oil, and Nick Cave. He also wrote, produced and directed 50 music videos for Japanese video juke box and karaoke company DiechiKoto He has taught film, art and interactive broadcast television in Perth, Western Australia at Edith Cowan University and Curtin University and is completing a PhD in Future Filmic discourses, Surveillance and Interactivity at Murdoch University where he has taught documentary and film production.

In Australia his work has centred on the Aboriginal history of the York area where he lived for many years near a Ballardong sacred site for men’s business with the support from local Aboriginal elders and resulted in a couple of shows in Sydney at Damien Minton Gallery and WA at the WA collective. The site was annexed as a granite quarry in the 1950s. 

The consequent work ‘Property Is Theft’, was a series of screen based works looking at a number of court cases involving Aboriginal defendants over the last 175 years since white occupation. The first work is a multi/screen hybrid work titled ‘Sight Unseen’ supported by a PICA development grant. GALLERY In Australia his recent work has centred on the Aboriginal history of the York area where he lived for many years In 2006 in collaboration with the York Theatre group he presented the first stage of ‘Sight Unseen’ for the York 175 years since white settlement celebrations.  The work is a multi/screen hybrid work titled ‘Sight Unseen’ supported by a PICA development grant and the York council. , was a series of screen based works looking at a number of court cases involving Aboriginal defendants over the last 175 years since white occupation.
In June 2007 he had a retrospective at Uplands gallery in Melbourne that consisted of an installation of 300 A3 documents and photos and screenings of 10 films and videos. The retrospective show plus a series of prints and recreations were shown at Urban Dingo as part of Fotofreo in April 2008. 

His work ‘Roadkill’ was shown in the 2009 'Sculpture by the Sea' show in Cottesloe and Bondi. 
In 2010 he participated in 'Mildura Palimpsest' and showed 'Against the Grain A Survey' of his work and performances at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in October 2010 at the Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney University. This show toured regional galleries in West Australia through 2013-15 with Art on the Move.
In 2013 he showed at Laure Genilard Gallery, and ‘The Big Deal’ London, the New Museum, ‘the real estate show’ ABC No Rio in  New York in 2014. Sight Unseen’ a multi/screen hybrid work York 2006, Survey shows titled Against the Grain Uplands gallery Melbourne, 2007, Urban Dingo Fremantle 2008, AEAF gallery Adelaide 2010, Tin Sheds Gallery Sydney 2012, The Cannery Gallery, Esperance, Geraldton Art Gallery, and Mandurah Art Centre 2013-16.

His work has been exhibited in numerous major shows and art institutions, worldwide, including The Beaubourg Paris, ICA London, ICA Boston, MOMA New York, The Hirschorn Museum Washington, the Baltimore Museum, The National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of NSW and South Australia, The National Gallery of Australia, the Sydney Biennale and numerous regional galleries in Australia. 
He is represented in public and private collections internationally. Including significant collections with Dr Donald Brook, Michael Hobbs, Kathryn Trees, Louise St John Kennedy, Robert and Sue Burns and Flinders University. 

His work is archived in the Art Galley of NSW, Sydney, Australia Screen and Sound, Canberra and Franklin Furnace, New York. He currently exhibits with Damien Minton Gallery in Sydney and WA Art Collective Gallery in West Australia.

SOLO SHOWS Property Is Theft’ Damien Minton Gallery. Sydney 2013Mandurah AC AOTM 2013, Esperance ‘cannery’ AOTM 2014, Perth City Council, Trans Art Red June 2015, Taipei TV May 2015, Geraldton Art Gallery AOTM June 2015, PUBLICATIONS books Not Ceasing to Loiter 1975 Flinders University Exploding sand dune postcard friends. 

1975 Flinders University A Pedestrian Series of Postcards, Burns press, Printed Matter 1977 NYC A Package Deal, 1974 with Dave Morrissey Nigel Roberts White elephant red herring 1979 with Viv Binns, Ian Milliss 6 Exploding Utopia, B1975 Book Machine, Artspace, Printed Matter MINEFIELD Art and Australia[ ed; Edward colless I WAS FRAMED unpublished tim burns Murdoch U Artspace Sydney Chapters in books ART and TECHNOLOGY in Australia till 1975 MIT Stephen Jones PARRALEL REALITIES The development of performance art in Australia Neil Howe Famous exhibitions Joanna Mendelson RECENT GROUP SHOWS Sculpture by the Sea 2009, 2013, 2015,16, 17, 18 19, 2021 Sculpture by the sea Bondi 2009 Yellow Vest FreoAC 2009, Octopus 13 Gertrude Contemporary 2013 curated glen barkley MCA Exploding Utopia Laure Genillard gallery London 2013,[curated Rozamin keshvani] Big Deal London Frieze 2013 COLAB New Museum NYC 2013, Albany painting prize 2014, Bankwest sculpture prize 2014, Madurah Art Centre SPAM 2015, Sculpture@bathers Beach 2015, 2017, 2019 Artist Village gallery Taipei, DIAtribe_interacTiV 2015, Melbourne Film Makers Coop ACMI [AtG] April 2015 Colab show Printed Matter NYC 16 Colab real estate show ABC NO RIO NYC 20