Untitled #247, 2003 (Tupperware)

Richard Caldicott’s Tupperware are luminous and saturated veils of colours, geometric shapes and forms, achieved by photographing plastic Tupperware containers illuminated by light against coloured backgrounds. Although ordinary to most, for Caldicott the use of the Tupperware is ideal because of its translucent and organically geometric shape. In some of his Tupperware pieces, Caldicott superimposes multiple film transparencies, resulting in a unique interplay of light, shadow and colours that transforms these ordinary objects into something near transcendent. His use of rectangles, concentric circles, and squares—hovering within large, rectilinear frames draw comparisons to the Colour Field paintings of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. Richard Caldicott is able to merge the mundane with the sublime, by contrasting the triviality of the Tupperware as an object with the sophistication of his visual process and the ensuing result. Begun in the 1990s, the Tupperware work has since become one of Caldicott’s most celebrated bodies of work.

Richard has the unique ability to transform the medium of photography, creating something new, but still using the most traditional technique. Richard is one of those artists who elevates photography to an important and recognised form of contemporary expression – Sir Elton John