Michael Landy

This large-scale work by Michael Landy was commissioned as part of Michael Landy’s Welcome to Essex at Firstsite, Colchester, an exhibition that explores the recent history of Essex and how the county has been stereotyped by the media. One such stereotype is the ‘Essex man’, a term coined by the Essex journalist Simon Heffer in his Sunday Telegraph article titled ‘Mrs. Thatcher’s Bruiser’, which was published in 1990.

Heffer’s article identified the ‘Essex man’ as a new social phenomenon: he is the working-class Tory who voted in Thatcher, kept her in office, and in this period played a key role in transforming the Tories from an establishment party to an anti-establishment one. The Essex man can be identified by his recreational proclivities, the article elaborated, among them drinking with mates, watching sport on television, and playing with his car. Though tongue in cheek, Heffer’s article sought to reflect on the transformation of the region’s working-class constituencies during the Thatcher era, in which Labour and socialist affiliations gave way to a modern Conservatism and entrepreneurial sensibility. The Essex man embraced this new political climate in which enterprise, graft and risk would be rewarded.

The original Sunday Telegraph article was accompanied by an illustration by Edward Collet, with a caption that read, ‘He expects to win, whether he is the best man or not’. For this work, Landy has redrawn Collet’s illustration and blown up his rendition to form a 8.5m high sculpture. At Firstsite, Landy’s Essex Man stood in the front lobby of the building, greeting, and looming over incoming visitors to the exhibition. The reverse of the sculpture features a cut-out excerpt of Heffer’s Sunday Telegraph article.