Michael Landy: Essex Idol

Michael Landy’s Essex idols are a reinterpretation of the Dagenham Idol, a four-thousand-year-old wooden figure that was unearthed in 1922 in Rainham Marshes, Dagenham, downstream from London on the north bank of the Thames. The figure, made of Scots pine, was found by workmen for the Ford Dagenham automotive factory, about twenty feet below the ground surface, and has been carbon dated to around 2250 BC, making it one of the earliest representations of the human form found in Europe.

Landy conceived of the Essex Idol when working towards the exhibition Michael Landy’s Welcome to Essex at Firstsite, Colchester (2021). Aiming to make an idol more befitting of contemporary Essex and its stereotypes of brash and unrefined tastes – stereotypes created and perpetuated by the British media over the last thirty years – Landy made a unique gold-leafed bronze idol, which was displayed at Firstsite as if it had been excavated from under the gallery floor. While the original idol is made of Scots pine, Landy’s Essex Idol is cast in bronze and finished with gold leaf to achieve a shinier, ‘blingier’ contemporary version.

The Dagenham Idol has many poor copies found in museum collections that act as display imitations of the original, which is held in the collection of Colchester Museums and on long-term loan to Vallance House. Indeed there are two copies on display in the Museum of London alone. These multiple versions of the idol, with varying levels of veracity in relation to the original, inspired Landy to further expand his play on notions of original, copy, and value by replicating his unique and precious gold-leafed Essex Idol in a series of ‘knock-offs’ in edition form and of decreasing faithfulness to the original.