Toby Tatum at Blacklands, East Sussex.
"Towards the onieric visions of the lost unconscious." Maria Gribova, Cineticle Art-cinema magazine, 2020.
“Places where the fantastical, the dreamlike and the sinister might reside.” Avant Kinema, 2018.
Writing about Paris and its people, Georges Perec set out in quest of the ‘infra-ordinary’: the humdrum, the non-event, the everyday—‘what happens,’ as he put it, ‘when nothing happens.’ In Perec’s hands, it proves surprisingly poignant. One could look at Toby Tatum’s films as a natural history equivalent. The 14 minutes of The Blue Flower show no more than that, but we’re lured in to the extraordinary architecture of Nigella Damascene (‘Love-in-a-mist’), the blur of passing insects, the effects of light and camera and the wondering which is which - and by the haunting soundtrack provided by Abi Fry. We’re hypnotically drawn in to how, in Tatum’s words, ‘a blue flower blooms on the threshold of the infinite’.” Paul Carey-Kent, excerpt from the NatureMax exhibition press release, 2020.
“The image was a heron stood in a sun-dappled pond hunting by waiting. The quality of the light and the composition, with the heron reflected in the water, was beautiful, and by slowing down and looping the footage, the bird seems almost to be frozen in the bewitching crepuscular sunlight, even though ripples in the water and the drift of dust betray the ebb of time.” Ben Nicholson on Toby Tatum’s The Loom, Sight & Sound Magazine, 2019.
"He guides us to places we seldom visit." Curators Dale Hudson and Claudia Pederson writing about Toby Tatum’s work for Invisible Geographies film festival, Ithaca Collage, NY, USA, 2018.
“Toby Tatum’s films exist in an ethereal space just beyond the grasp of the physical world, they seem to capture those mysterious moments when something is seen out of the corner of one’s eye in the shadows of the trees on a bright hazy summer’s day, or in the light bouncing on the water of a bubbling stream. These short films, which rarely exceed ten minutes in length, are windows into parallel dimensions, a wood between worlds mostly unpopulated by humans, a dimension where time seems to stretch and warp. An eternity is contained in the drop of a leaf and a world can start and end with a breath of wind. After watching a few of his films in a row one may start to suspect that these worlds are occupied by sprites, dryads and subterranean creatures, and that just out of sight something is watching back from the undergrowth. These are beautiful films, somehow familiar but mysterious and strange, which once entered will call you to return again.” Film Panic magazine, 2016.
“The characteristic stillness of Tatum's image is a symbol of transcendence and contemplation, of eternal sleep in constant wakefulness. An intermediate state where contemplative slowness and the absolute lack of sudden movements supposes the acceptance of a recovered way of seeing life and art. A reality beyond the tangible appears on the screen, hidden and discovered in which the cosmos and the earthly seem to coexist in singular harmony in a series of idyllic and ancient sanctuaries.” Borja Castillejo Calvo, Cinesinfin, 2019
Toby Tatum (born 1974, UK) studied Fine Art at the University of Brighton and Chelsea College of Art.
His films have been exhibited at numerous film festivals and arts events worldwide, including Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival, Berwick Upon Tweed Film & Media Arts Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Curtas Vila do Conde, Rotterdam International Film Festival, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Videoformes, and the BFI London Film Festival.
Toby Tatum is a two-time recipient of the Swedenborg Film Festival Best Film award.
He lives in Hastings, UK.
Toby Tatum can be contacted at toby@tobytatum.com