/Imagine(Cowboys)
31 July - 29 August 2025
Thought Forms Gallery
Thought Forms presents /Imagine (Cowboys), an exhibition of new works by Melbourne-based artist, Tom Adair. Marking his first exhibition in Melbourne in seven years, this return follows a string of successful shows interstate and abroad, including in Sydney and the United States.
Working from AI-generated images of cowboys, Tom Adair renders these paintings with the dotted airbrush technique that features in much of his previous work. The regimented nature of these markings – that of equidistantly interspersed dots – mimics the technological language of the computer system (Midjourney) from which the source material originated, the aesthetic reminiscent of coding sequences or pixelated screens.
Subtle figurative and compositional mistakes – additional limbs or an unmatched shadow, amongst other incoherencies – hint at a misalignment between Artificial Intelligence and the world it attempts to imitate. The subtlety itself of these inaccuracies evokes a dissonance which pervades the exhibition, for as it is with the ‘uncanny valley theory’, the audience may find it more perturbing to observe a minor error, rather than a conspicuous one.
/Imagine (Cowboys) continues a tradition of equestrian painting that far precedes the mythos of the cowboy and the American West. Some of the more notable examples of this include Diego Velazquez's Equestrian Portrait of Philip IV (1636) and Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1805). Where the intention of those paintings was to convey the monarch's effortless control of the realm and affairs of state, Adair's paintings depict a much more hesitant figure with a less than tenuous grasp of his own destiny. Edge of the limit, by example, depicts a cowboy barely astride a galloping horse, his legs hovering above the saddle. This suspension of the figure, as if he has been bucked, suggests an inability to control his steed, which perhaps represents Artificial Intelligence itself: self-propelling, unbridled and unstoppable.
For this exhibition, Adair acknowledges the influence of Richard Prince's Cowboys series, in which the American artist would “re-photograph” Marlboro cigarette ads, often cropping out the text and enlarging the image, recontextualising it as fine art. By using artificially generated imagery, however, Adair profoundly extends his predecessor's subversive approach to authorship, calling into question the very notion of originality and the role of human agency in the artistic process. Moreover, he further deconstructs the archetype of the cowboy, positioning him as the representative of analog humanity, rendered impotent in the face of Artificial Intelligence's manifest destiny. Oblivion, in which Adair depicts a cowboy riding away from, rather than into, a setting sun, is amongst the exhibition's most poignant expressions of this. Much like a captive, the rider sits in reverse and stares longingly at the horizon, the horse seemingly oblivious to his yearning. The ultimate effect of this contrast between the cowboy's desires and the implacable advance of his horse is a devastating sense of inevitability.
The writer, Ken McGregor, says of /Imagine (Cowboys) that “Tom Adair’s new collection of artworks is of high quality and should be thoroughly examined rather than just superficially observed. Each work has depth, complexity and unique qualities that warrant a closer look and deeper engagement.”
Thought Forms invites visitors to view these works between the 31st of July and the 29th of August, and to join in the artist’s examinations of some of the more salient themes of our time, including myth, technology, Artificial Intelligence and authorship - in what marks a significant homecoming for Adair after nearly a decade of exhibiting elsewhere.
Exhibition Notes by Julius Killerby
June, 2025