The right-wing council running the county of Kent in southeast England has removed a key early work by the artist Antony Gormley from a public site. The piece Two Stones (1979-81)—which stood outside the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone—was sold back to the artist by the Reform-run Kent County Council for an undisclosed sum, according to a council spokesperson.
The Green Party’s Stuart Jeffery, leader of Maidstone Borough Council, told the Byline Times that KCC removed the work “quietly”, adding: “It disappeared sometime last week [week beginning 6 April] and then we found it missing.”
Kent County Council said in a statement: “[The council] recognises the cultural significance of Two Stones and Gormley’s connection to Maidstone, therefore the decision to sell [the work] back to the artist was taken carefully as part of KCC’s ongoing work to manage the significant financial pressures facing Kent… the private sale enables the council to raise income without increasing costs for residents or reducing frontline services.” The council faces a severe budget deficit and Reform has yet to deliver the tax cuts promised ahead of winning control of Kent in last spring’s local elections.
Gormley was commissioned in 1979 by Kent County Council (KCC) and Arts Council England to create the piece while teaching at Maidstone College of Art. It was the first public commission by the artist. Gormley went onto create one of the UK's most famous public works of art, the Angel of the North (1998) in Gateshead.
According to the ArtUK database, Two Stones comprises an eight-ton granite boulder from Scotland along with a replica made of bronze and concrete. The work was relocated to the Kent History and Library Centre in 2013 (it was previously sited at Singleton Lane in Ashford where it was vandalised).
As reported in the local news outlet Kent Current, the work was valued at £859,000 in KCC’s most recent statement of accounts from 2024/25. A spokesperson for the council, however, says the council is “unable to provide the sale price as it is subject to the confidentiality clause of the sale agreement”.
Gormley declined to comment on the sale of the work. The work is still listed on the artist’s website as being a “permanent installation [at] Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, England”.
Paula Orrell, the national director of the Contemporary Visual Arts Network, told The Art Newspaper: “This is deeply disappointing, as a former Maidstone School of Art student. Selling public artworks risks hollowing out our shared cultural life. In ten to 15 years, our sector could look unrecognisable. At a time of growing political and social division, we should be investing in the arts as a vehicle for cultural understanding, including finding ways to speak across political differences.” She adds: “The only small reassurance is that the work has returned to Antony Gormley because, in the artist's hands, it can continue to have meaning and purpose beyond the limits of a council balance sheet.”
The disposal of the Gormley work follows another controversial sale earlier this year by KCC of part of the council collection including a cache of prints by Tony Ray-Jones, which went under the hammer at auction last month. The sale, organised by Sworders Fine Art Auctioneers, included 168 lots drawn from the council collection including a print by Andy Goldsworthy—Forked Sticks in Water, Bentham, Yorkshire, March 1979— which sold for £700.
