This Side of Paradise: Narrative, Cinema and Suburbia in the Work of Miles Aldridge and Todd Hido

This Side of Paradise: Narrative, Cinema and Suburbia in the Work of Miles Aldridge and Todd Hido presents twenty large-scale colour works demonstrating how these two contemporary artists investigate the concept of suburbia.

Includes: Miles Aldridge, Todd Hido

Though works by Aldridge and Hido are visually dissimilar, both artists are recognisable for their distinctive cinematic colour palettes, lighting and compositions, and the suggestion of narrative possibilities beyond the edge of the frame. Whereas Hido presents a shadowy, empty, exterior suburban world, Aldridge presents the viewer with brightly lit, garish interiors, focusing on the imagined lives of the women who inhabit them.

Hido’s works in the exhibition are from his ongoing Houses at Night series, depicting isolated suburban homes in America, photographed at night, replete with voyeuristic undertones and implied narrative. Hido’s work is concerned with themes of urban isolation and interior lives, lived separately from outward appearances. His compositions are often bereft of human presence, although a singular lit window or an empty car become signifiers of stories left untold.

The depictions of isolated women in highly-stylised, constructed interiors in the work by Aldridge suggest intimate dramas in these stifling domestic settings. His fastidiously constructed tableaus are charged with psychological tension and narrative ambiguity. The often-surreal imagery is heightened by his use of vibrant, richly saturated, acid tones.

Both Miles Aldridge and Todd Hido look to subvert the traditional American suburban fantasy, with the unsettling undercurrents woven through their work. Their aesthetics draw on the influence of Hollywood cinema and directors Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch. This Side of Paradise presents photographs by each artist that demonstrate their understanding of visual suspense with each work carefully crafted to transform the everyday, and invert the familiar.