St Deodatus (Medium) Photograph - Limited Edition of 5

Toby de Silva is a contemporary British artist who creates large scale photographs that investigate the interplay between perceived reality and the uncanny. Inspired by artists and writers who draw predominantly on the imagination de Silva constructs images that question our relationship with mortality and fantasy. His work has evolved from documenting the extraordinary to reconstructing it and always starts with a compulsion to explore something mysterious. Subjects have included locations associated with hauntings, sites of unsolved murders and houses that appeared in classic horror movies. His first major work was ‘The Perfect Place to Die’ a two year survey of Japan’s infamous Aokigahara ‘suicide forest’. More recently de Silva has focussed on re-purposing the landscape to suggest alternate realism, often inserting artificial elements or staging events that feature fictitious narratives meticulously assembled to create fantasies invoking mystery and tension. Currently based in Asia, de Silva studied at Falmouth University followed by an MA in Photographic Studies at the University of Westminster.