TOM FURSE
Cluster Photography & Print Exhibitor | 2025
Tom Furse (b. 1987) is a British artist based in Margate with a broad multi-disciplinary practice spanning the visual and sonic arts. A compulsive maker since childhood, Furse studied at the London College of Communication but began his artistic career as a self-taught musician in 2005 - playing bass, and then later synthesisers, in The Horrors - a band known for their chameleonic, shape-shifting nature. He recorded five albums with the band, three of which entered the top 6 of the UK albums charts, and toured the world multiple times over the course of a successful 15 years. During that time Furse also released several solo releases, a host of film scores and developed a career as a prolific composer, remixer and record producer.
“‘Sole Trader’ is a collaboration between myself and writer, journalist and model Sydney Lima. The image is based on a photograph taken by Lima for her OnlyFans page, taking a piece of paywalled ephemeral content and transforming it using custom-built machine learning models and workflows into a piece of ethereal erotica that sits timelessly between photograph, airbrush painting, and x-ray.
This series explores how the platform era forced the model to become a self-portrait photographer, and how we can use machine learning to augment the photographic process.”
Seeking new creative avenues and spurred on by the dramatic lifestyle shift of the Covid lockdown, Furse was an early adopter of the creative applications of machine learning and taught himself how to use AI after being directed to some open source code on the internet. Entranced by this novel technology, he became an obsessive image and animation creator once again, completing a circle begun in his childhood. His artwork spans many avenues but it is all tied together by an evocative dream-like state, blurring the lines between mediums, eras and reality.
